The frost is definitely on the pumpkin. It’s the time of year when Linus starts to think about the patron squash of Halloween while the other kids and some adults, including me, begin to wonder about hauntings, witches’ brews, buying trick-or-treat candy, and graveyards.
Apparently it’s also the time when certain species of the animal kingdom start to feel a fascination with the macabre as well. The variety of mice that populate the Butterbean neighborhood seem to be especially fascinated with finding a place to die, and they seem tothink that inside my house is the place to do it.
I understand why mice would begin to come inside at this time of year if they are trying to keep warm. Considering the frost on the gardens, etc, and the fact that they can apparently squirm through an opening the size of a gum wrapper, I would be surprised not to find them inside. But if they were coming inside to get warm, you should be finding them arranged around the space heater like I am.
But I think that there is something else going on.
Maybe mice and elephants have more in common than just a mutual mortal fear. Maybe mice are also compelled by instinct to find the communal graveyard of the rodent world and make a strange pilgrimage there every fall.
Or perhaps there is a mouse version of the Ghost in the Graveyard game and they double-mouse-dare each other to see whether they can enter the graveyard and return. These mice tell scary stories to their children which proclaim that no mouse has ever come back, and well they should, because they never do.
If you think that I am luring mice into something as commonplace as old fashioned mousetraps, you are wrong. I do have a few of those, but I don’t catch many mice. There probably aren’t ghostly mouse legends about the Butterbeans’ mousetraps.
But the graveyard from which no mice ever return happens to be in a deep and dark crevasse into which they mysteriously seem to be compelled to jump or fall without the encouragement of any kind of mouse bait. Somehow they have found a way to die a dramatic death inside of the west wall in my kitchen. I promise that I haven’t lured any of them into that wall with amontillado, or beer or cheese or cake or anything else for that matter. What their fascination with the graveyard is I don’t know, but mice tread the trail of no return year after year, never to see their families again. Apparently there is no way for a mouse to climb out of the “pit” once he is in it.
Believe me, I don’t want dead mice a-moldering away inside of the wall. I prefer not to have the smells of rotting carcasses, no matter how small, emanating from behind the telephone. Nor do I want trapped live mice inside of the wall either. They get hungry and they aren’t able to survive on insulation, electrical wiring and plasterboard. Besides they are afraid of the dark, so they try to scratch and chew themselves out of the wall all the while making highly disturbing noises.
One almost succeeded. I was a little disconcerted to walk into the kitchen one morning and see a snuffling pink nose protruding from a hole at the top of the baseboard. Thankfully the hole was only half the size of a gum wrapper. I’m sorry, but we had to plaster up that hole with little Fortunato trapped inside. It was an evil deed for sure, but I would be very happy if he had not gotten himself into the wall to begin with.
After a few days, when we were pretty sure he was dead and the Halloween games were over, we (we here means Mr. Butterbean) decided to open up the wall to see whether we could find a way to discourage the mice from enacting their death throes inside of it. I am sorry to say that we didn’t and that we removed eighteen little skeletons from inside the wall, all of those from between only two studs.
It’s one of the mysteries of the animal kingdom, but I’m not going to tear down this wall to try to solve it.
Wednesday, October 28, 2009
Monday, October 19, 2009
The cost of turning out the lights
Mr. Butterbean is the light-switch Nazi.
What I am saying is that when it comes to the light switches in our house, he is waging a battle against “on” and is determined that light switches should be flipped to the “off” position; and he has an assortment of weapons in his arsenal to enforce “off.”
At nighttime we live in a world of semi-darkness because at some time during his journey to moral maturity, Mr. B.’s compass got pointed in that direction. In plain language (which I should use more often) leaving on more lights than we need to wastes electricity which in turn costs money. How much? I am about to find out…
Okay, this is the deal: according to someone named “billruss” on the ask.yahoo website, “your 75 watt bulb, if it burns for an hour, will use 75 watt-hours of electricity. Typical cost for electricity (check your bill) is 10¢ (around here it’s a little less) per kW-hr or per 1000 watt-hours. So in one hour your bulb uses 75/1000 x 10¢ or 0.75¢.”
According to Bill’s formula and my calculations, I can burn that light bulb for the whole evening which therefore costs about three cents a day, providing I turn it off when I go to bed or leave the house. I can burn it all year for about $10.00. That is less than Mr. B. has tosses into his quart-sized penny jar in a month. That is less than I find in the washer in a couple of months.
Beyond all that, I understand that the cost for using the new-and-improved, energy-efficient kryptonite light bulbs is even less, provided you can scrape together the necessary down payment to buy some. That kind of money can’t be found in the washer or under the couch cushions.
Yes, I am all for saving money. The more I save on light, the more I can spend on other higher-energy-usage electronic devices. So I can probably buy a new computer with the money I save turning off lights in about twenty years.
My problem with semi-darkness is this: I see at about 75% efficiency during daylight hours. When the lights are low, it drops to somewhere around .75%. Things like stairs, tables, closet doors, stools, and chair legs begin to blend into other things like walls, and floors. I suppose that the same thing happens to the rest of you when the amount of light decreases to a certain threshold, whatever wattage that may be your household.
Now then, compare the penny-per-hour cost of electricity to the cost of band-aids and first-aid cream per incidence of stubbed toes, $12.75, or to the cost of ibuprofen for bruised shins and elbows per year, $27.95. Then factor in the cost of stitches to the forehead, one time only, $480 (plus more bandages and ibuprofen), which cost applies only if your laceration is not referred to a plastic surgeon, when it may cost three month’s wages plus whatever dollar amount you want to put on pain and suffering.
As you can see, even figuring conservatively which means excluding the possibility that I might fall down the stairs, turning off the lights may not be cost effective. Apparently the Light Nazi and Blind Bertha are just not a good combination.
Should the current administration of the federal government need a light czar to work under the energy cazr to promote walking around in the dark, and I predict that they will, I know just the man for the job. And he has no ties to the Chicago mob, pays his taxes, and loves apple pie.
Mr. B. can think of hundreds of ways to get you to turn off the lights. Most of them involve the application of that great motivational tool—guilt. The rest of them are “turn out the light,” which is uttered as soon as you stand up from your chair or start for the exit of a particular room. That you are coming back in thirty seconds doesn’t count.
Should we ever have a light czar, no matter who it is, I may have to show up at a light-tea party. I already know what my handmade placard will read: “SAVE OUR SHINS!"
What I am saying is that when it comes to the light switches in our house, he is waging a battle against “on” and is determined that light switches should be flipped to the “off” position; and he has an assortment of weapons in his arsenal to enforce “off.”
At nighttime we live in a world of semi-darkness because at some time during his journey to moral maturity, Mr. B.’s compass got pointed in that direction. In plain language (which I should use more often) leaving on more lights than we need to wastes electricity which in turn costs money. How much? I am about to find out…
Okay, this is the deal: according to someone named “billruss” on the ask.yahoo website, “your 75 watt bulb, if it burns for an hour, will use 75 watt-hours of electricity. Typical cost for electricity (check your bill) is 10¢ (around here it’s a little less) per kW-hr or per 1000 watt-hours. So in one hour your bulb uses 75/1000 x 10¢ or 0.75¢.”
According to Bill’s formula and my calculations, I can burn that light bulb for the whole evening which therefore costs about three cents a day, providing I turn it off when I go to bed or leave the house. I can burn it all year for about $10.00. That is less than Mr. B. has tosses into his quart-sized penny jar in a month. That is less than I find in the washer in a couple of months.
Beyond all that, I understand that the cost for using the new-and-improved, energy-efficient kryptonite light bulbs is even less, provided you can scrape together the necessary down payment to buy some. That kind of money can’t be found in the washer or under the couch cushions.
Yes, I am all for saving money. The more I save on light, the more I can spend on other higher-energy-usage electronic devices. So I can probably buy a new computer with the money I save turning off lights in about twenty years.
My problem with semi-darkness is this: I see at about 75% efficiency during daylight hours. When the lights are low, it drops to somewhere around .75%. Things like stairs, tables, closet doors, stools, and chair legs begin to blend into other things like walls, and floors. I suppose that the same thing happens to the rest of you when the amount of light decreases to a certain threshold, whatever wattage that may be your household.
Now then, compare the penny-per-hour cost of electricity to the cost of band-aids and first-aid cream per incidence of stubbed toes, $12.75, or to the cost of ibuprofen for bruised shins and elbows per year, $27.95. Then factor in the cost of stitches to the forehead, one time only, $480 (plus more bandages and ibuprofen), which cost applies only if your laceration is not referred to a plastic surgeon, when it may cost three month’s wages plus whatever dollar amount you want to put on pain and suffering.
As you can see, even figuring conservatively which means excluding the possibility that I might fall down the stairs, turning off the lights may not be cost effective. Apparently the Light Nazi and Blind Bertha are just not a good combination.
Should the current administration of the federal government need a light czar to work under the energy cazr to promote walking around in the dark, and I predict that they will, I know just the man for the job. And he has no ties to the Chicago mob, pays his taxes, and loves apple pie.
Mr. B. can think of hundreds of ways to get you to turn off the lights. Most of them involve the application of that great motivational tool—guilt. The rest of them are “turn out the light,” which is uttered as soon as you stand up from your chair or start for the exit of a particular room. That you are coming back in thirty seconds doesn’t count.
Should we ever have a light czar, no matter who it is, I may have to show up at a light-tea party. I already know what my handmade placard will read: “SAVE OUR SHINS!"
The chronicles of cold cereal
Bertha is not necessarily well-known for her inclination to discuss the weightier matters. In fact that word you have been hearing so much lately—frivolous—is probably more on the mark.
One of those charming and frivolous products that deserves discussion though, is that breakfast food known as cold cereal which is so characteristic of the American cultural scene, which scene by the way is disappearing rapidly and needs to be preserved.
So, Cheerios, Wheaties and Corn Flakes are older than I am. They were the breakfast of everyone, champions or losers, back in the in the 40s when I was part of the cereal generation.
Excluding oatmeal, I suppose, Corn Flakes is arguably the mother of them all and was “discovered” by John Harvey Kellogg when he was busy making bland food for the patients at his health spa. He hoped the bland food would have a calming effect on some of his patients.. He accidentally overcooked a batch of corn “stuff” which turned it into flakes instead of sheets. (I can only imagine sheets.) Not wanting to throw them out, he served them to the patients, who, interestingly, preferred flakes to sheets. And that was the last time that cereal was thought to have a calming effect on anyone. So cereal came to have historical, if not nutritional or intrinsic value.
Fast forward a couple hundred years from now, though, to when archaeologists excavate certain buildings belonging to this decade. They will no doubt proclaim that little round “O’s (are there any other kind?) must have had religious significance and therefore intrinsic value back then, uh now.
During the 70s when I was raising kids, cereal was the quintessential junk food. There was a national uproar over the lack of food value in something that was used to feed seventy percent of the country’s kids who were just on their way out the door to catch the school bus; in spite of the fact that cold cereal was single-handedly responsible for helping all of those children not miss the bus and therefore morning arithmetic.
But wait, that was back when this country was way ahead of the rest of the world in all of the smart indices. Do you suppose there is a direct correlation between eating junk food and intellect? Well, maybe not. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out what tastes better.
Well, that decade may have been the beginning of the socialization of cereal. Someone made the manufacturers put all of the natural nutrients and fibers back into the cereal and take the sugar out. And thus the dumbing down of American school children had begun.
Thanks to some good PR, cereal’s reputation is of late considerably improved. The PR blitzes began way before this however. The industry long ago began to market their product to kids. There are the leprechaun/elf-based marketing strategies which are some of the oldest due to the fact that fairies are immortal. And there are the animal mascot approaches, some of which feature kid-friendly tigers, rabbits and roosters which are septuagenarians. And there are the all-American athlete angles. Willie Mays used to grace a box of Wheaties back in the day.
And alternatively then and now there are the mothers who are desperately trying to maintain control over the contents of the shopping cart. As early as the 70’s cereal had become a method of advancing one’s social status. Children wanted the flashy, colorful, expensively packaged kinds which they ate while they wore their Calvin Klein or Jordache jeans. Cereal boxes and jeans are alike that way sometimes. What goes into them is sometimes worth less than the packaging.
As for me and Mr. B. we have arrived at the age, in this decade, where the only cereals under consideration reside on the top row of the cereal aisle. That makes sense if your marketing target is kids. However, we grew out of our jeans and flashy cereals some time ago. But it is unfortunate that we practically have to get a chair to view the top row of cereal boxes through our bifocals. And we can barely read the nutrition facts at all.
While sitting at the kitchen table reading the cereal box the other day though, I was amused to see, in big letters, that I had bought “Granola—without raisins.”
One of those charming and frivolous products that deserves discussion though, is that breakfast food known as cold cereal which is so characteristic of the American cultural scene, which scene by the way is disappearing rapidly and needs to be preserved.
So, Cheerios, Wheaties and Corn Flakes are older than I am. They were the breakfast of everyone, champions or losers, back in the in the 40s when I was part of the cereal generation.
Excluding oatmeal, I suppose, Corn Flakes is arguably the mother of them all and was “discovered” by John Harvey Kellogg when he was busy making bland food for the patients at his health spa. He hoped the bland food would have a calming effect on some of his patients.. He accidentally overcooked a batch of corn “stuff” which turned it into flakes instead of sheets. (I can only imagine sheets.) Not wanting to throw them out, he served them to the patients, who, interestingly, preferred flakes to sheets. And that was the last time that cereal was thought to have a calming effect on anyone. So cereal came to have historical, if not nutritional or intrinsic value.
Fast forward a couple hundred years from now, though, to when archaeologists excavate certain buildings belonging to this decade. They will no doubt proclaim that little round “O’s (are there any other kind?) must have had religious significance and therefore intrinsic value back then, uh now.
During the 70s when I was raising kids, cereal was the quintessential junk food. There was a national uproar over the lack of food value in something that was used to feed seventy percent of the country’s kids who were just on their way out the door to catch the school bus; in spite of the fact that cold cereal was single-handedly responsible for helping all of those children not miss the bus and therefore morning arithmetic.
But wait, that was back when this country was way ahead of the rest of the world in all of the smart indices. Do you suppose there is a direct correlation between eating junk food and intellect? Well, maybe not. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out what tastes better.
Well, that decade may have been the beginning of the socialization of cereal. Someone made the manufacturers put all of the natural nutrients and fibers back into the cereal and take the sugar out. And thus the dumbing down of American school children had begun.
Thanks to some good PR, cereal’s reputation is of late considerably improved. The PR blitzes began way before this however. The industry long ago began to market their product to kids. There are the leprechaun/elf-based marketing strategies which are some of the oldest due to the fact that fairies are immortal. And there are the animal mascot approaches, some of which feature kid-friendly tigers, rabbits and roosters which are septuagenarians. And there are the all-American athlete angles. Willie Mays used to grace a box of Wheaties back in the day.
And alternatively then and now there are the mothers who are desperately trying to maintain control over the contents of the shopping cart. As early as the 70’s cereal had become a method of advancing one’s social status. Children wanted the flashy, colorful, expensively packaged kinds which they ate while they wore their Calvin Klein or Jordache jeans. Cereal boxes and jeans are alike that way sometimes. What goes into them is sometimes worth less than the packaging.
As for me and Mr. B. we have arrived at the age, in this decade, where the only cereals under consideration reside on the top row of the cereal aisle. That makes sense if your marketing target is kids. However, we grew out of our jeans and flashy cereals some time ago. But it is unfortunate that we practically have to get a chair to view the top row of cereal boxes through our bifocals. And we can barely read the nutrition facts at all.
While sitting at the kitchen table reading the cereal box the other day though, I was amused to see, in big letters, that I had bought “Granola—without raisins.”
Where the body meets the car
I am fearful that in the quest to control our driving habits, some car czar in the upper echelons of the motor vehicle industry, lately the federal government, will be trying to annihilate every semblance of comfort in a car on the grounds that if you get too comfortable in those things, you will become impaired enough to run over a lizard or a rabbit or something.
Now I know that when it comes to vehicle performance, roughly half of you are more concerned with where the rubber meets the road. But if cars become smaller and more Spartan, surely they will become less comfortable in that area where the body meets the car—the car seat.
Speaking of car seats, look at what they have done to our under-60-lbs. population where their little backsides meet the car. Child car-seat engineers ought to be required to drive for at least three hours straight with a couple of rear-facing, strapped-in kids who will be screaming because they are rear-facing and strapped-in.
I’m sorry, but those conditions don’t enhance safety much since two screaming kids are more of a distraction to the driver than a diaper bag full of cell phones all receiving text messages at once. Besides who doesn’t drive more carefully when his payload isn’t strapped down?
In addition to the distraction issue. there is the bodily injury issue. I’m not talking about the collision-induced kind. Did you ever try to put a pacifier into a baby’s back-seat rear-facing mouth from the front-seat forward-facing driver’s seat? An Olympic gymnast couldn’t do it. After a couple of shoulder dislocations, you will soon learn that you need to pull over for that one. By the way, speaking of Olympic athletes, do you know how fast and how far an eleven-month-old can throw a pacifier? Try moving quickly enough to catch one when you are buckled up.
But I digress. Back to the issue of driver/passenger comfort. I will have to admit that I haven’t test-driven a whole lot of cars. A few Fords, a few Chevys, middle-of-the-road types of vehicles. But I think they are getting more uncomfortable lately. There are more leather seats around, at least within my frame of reference.
Are leather seats practical? Not from the cow’s point of view.
Are leather seats really leather? If they are, I can’t imagine why PETA isn’t all over that one.
Are leather seats comfortable? No, and I don’t know what kinds of positives they are supposed to deliver either. They are cold in winter and hot in summer. During all seasons they are slippery and you tend to slide forward in them until you are in danger of taking a seat on the floor. Everything you set on them—your purse, your mail, your groceries reacts the same way.
I’m sorry, I’m not buckling in my accessories. It is bad enough to be told by an unforgiving beeper that I have to buckle myself in. Not that I wouldn’t want a seat belt in place if I ever needed one, but I just want to be the one to decide to place it.
Then there is the headrest which is a misnomer and should be called a pain in the neck. Whether it is really designed to be a whiplash preventer but was then given the misleading name of headrest to prevent our emotional unrest, I am not sure, but don’t plan on resting your head on that thing. I question its ability to prevent whiplash since whiplash could easily occur somewhere in the huge gulf between the head and the “headrest.”
Okay, just so you don’t think that all I do is complain, here is a great big thumbs-up, high-five, A-okay, whatever is good, to the inventor of the seat heater, alternately called the heat seater. Somebody got that one right. It is actually warm in winter. It warms almost half your body while it gently relaxes your shoulders which were probably previously hunched against the cold or dislocated from reaching the baby or strained from trying to lay your head back onto the whiplash preventer.
Now I know that when it comes to vehicle performance, roughly half of you are more concerned with where the rubber meets the road. But if cars become smaller and more Spartan, surely they will become less comfortable in that area where the body meets the car—the car seat.
Speaking of car seats, look at what they have done to our under-60-lbs. population where their little backsides meet the car. Child car-seat engineers ought to be required to drive for at least three hours straight with a couple of rear-facing, strapped-in kids who will be screaming because they are rear-facing and strapped-in.
I’m sorry, but those conditions don’t enhance safety much since two screaming kids are more of a distraction to the driver than a diaper bag full of cell phones all receiving text messages at once. Besides who doesn’t drive more carefully when his payload isn’t strapped down?
In addition to the distraction issue. there is the bodily injury issue. I’m not talking about the collision-induced kind. Did you ever try to put a pacifier into a baby’s back-seat rear-facing mouth from the front-seat forward-facing driver’s seat? An Olympic gymnast couldn’t do it. After a couple of shoulder dislocations, you will soon learn that you need to pull over for that one. By the way, speaking of Olympic athletes, do you know how fast and how far an eleven-month-old can throw a pacifier? Try moving quickly enough to catch one when you are buckled up.
But I digress. Back to the issue of driver/passenger comfort. I will have to admit that I haven’t test-driven a whole lot of cars. A few Fords, a few Chevys, middle-of-the-road types of vehicles. But I think they are getting more uncomfortable lately. There are more leather seats around, at least within my frame of reference.
Are leather seats practical? Not from the cow’s point of view.
Are leather seats really leather? If they are, I can’t imagine why PETA isn’t all over that one.
Are leather seats comfortable? No, and I don’t know what kinds of positives they are supposed to deliver either. They are cold in winter and hot in summer. During all seasons they are slippery and you tend to slide forward in them until you are in danger of taking a seat on the floor. Everything you set on them—your purse, your mail, your groceries reacts the same way.
I’m sorry, I’m not buckling in my accessories. It is bad enough to be told by an unforgiving beeper that I have to buckle myself in. Not that I wouldn’t want a seat belt in place if I ever needed one, but I just want to be the one to decide to place it.
Then there is the headrest which is a misnomer and should be called a pain in the neck. Whether it is really designed to be a whiplash preventer but was then given the misleading name of headrest to prevent our emotional unrest, I am not sure, but don’t plan on resting your head on that thing. I question its ability to prevent whiplash since whiplash could easily occur somewhere in the huge gulf between the head and the “headrest.”
Okay, just so you don’t think that all I do is complain, here is a great big thumbs-up, high-five, A-okay, whatever is good, to the inventor of the seat heater, alternately called the heat seater. Somebody got that one right. It is actually warm in winter. It warms almost half your body while it gently relaxes your shoulders which were probably previously hunched against the cold or dislocated from reaching the baby or strained from trying to lay your head back onto the whiplash preventer.
How to negotiate a four-way stop intersection
We have acquired a some new low-volume, high-stress (four-way stop) intersections in our town lately. Until now they have been few and far between. Drivers could still get where they wanted to go by detouring occasionally so as to avoid them.
Suddenly, it is nearly inevitable that you will have to use one of those intersections unless you want to go somewhere by way of Colorado.
One of the problems with four-way stops is that too many of us took Driver’s Ed. too long ago. The other problem is that some of us weren’t paying attention during the four-way stop chapter anyway.
Just so you know, I happen to fall into the first group, not the second. So I got online and looked up the four-way-stop rules in an effort to get up to speed on this one, which is the only reason I am qualified to write about it. So unless you like going to Colorado, here is the missing chapter.
The basic rule of the four-way stop is to pay attention as you approach the intersection because the vehicles go through the intersection in the order they stopped at it. By the way, four-way stop does not mean that you have to wait for three more cars to stop before you can move through the intersection. It’s not rocket science; however, there are a few contingencies which might make it akin to computer programming.
First, the definition of “stop” is: none of your wheels are turning. (“Rolling stop” is an oxymoron that has no place in the lexicon of driving terminology.) That contingency might make it necessary for you to keep one eye on your rearview mirror in case the driver behind you thinks that “rolling stop” is a legitimate maneuver. This condition makes you realize a whole new meaning to the dictum “I got your back,” which in turn makes it difficult to recall which cars arrived at the intersection in which order.
Second, if you see that one of the drivers at the intersection is using a cell phone, you may have to assume that he/she doesn’t know who got to the intersection first either. In that case you may resort to hand-waving which may solve the problem of who goes first. Please note: you may be the type of person who opens the door for football players, but polite isn’t relative here. Do not wait for all of the other cars to go first unless you are sure that you got there last.
Fourth, one or more cars may actually arrive at the intersection at the same time. This isn’t the same as not knowing who arrived when. However, your perceptions of “the same time” may not be the same as someone else’s. You may be at the intersection with a Nascar driver wannabe who doesn’t comprehend second or third. If you suspect that you are at the intersection with one of those people, just pretend that you came in second or third, in spite of the usual regulation which prescribes that the car on the right goes first.
Fifth, in rare instances four cars might actually arrive at the intersection at the same time, which results in maneuvers similar to performing the Hokey-Pokey, or maybe it’s a square dancing routine that I am thinking of. I am sorry, but none of the rules apply since everyone is on someone’s right and since taking turns is going to require more than just holding up one, two, three, or four fingers. The way I see it everyone will be signaling “we’re number one.” You won’t see a peace sign anywhere.
For this contingency, I recommend carrying an empty pop bottle under your back seat, or brushing up on your Rock, Paper, Scissors skills. Another strategy is to make sure that you and three other cars are not arriving at the intersection simultaneously. The safest way to do that is to get there last. It’s not first, but it’s a strategy that gives you control over the situation. No one will try to beat you out of that position, and hey, believe it or not, the object is to get through the intersection without a bent fender.
The State of Utah Driver’s Handbook is mysteriously silent on the subject of four-way stops. Perhaps Utah drivers weren’t sleeping through four-way stop classes. Maybe there weren’t any, which might explain the general confusion at four-way stops. I did find this instruction on a website which describes some method for maneuvering a crowded four-way stop: “The alternating directions take turns. In other words, north and south go, then west and east. Those turning left yeild (original spelling maintained) to the car coming the opposite direction, just like with a green light.” I think that the instructions contained in the Utah Handbook are more helpful.
For your information, though, there are two pages of instructions in that handbook devoted to the maneuver of parallel parking. Now there is something that you can still manage to avoid without detouring through Colorado.
Suddenly, it is nearly inevitable that you will have to use one of those intersections unless you want to go somewhere by way of Colorado.
One of the problems with four-way stops is that too many of us took Driver’s Ed. too long ago. The other problem is that some of us weren’t paying attention during the four-way stop chapter anyway.
Just so you know, I happen to fall into the first group, not the second. So I got online and looked up the four-way-stop rules in an effort to get up to speed on this one, which is the only reason I am qualified to write about it. So unless you like going to Colorado, here is the missing chapter.
The basic rule of the four-way stop is to pay attention as you approach the intersection because the vehicles go through the intersection in the order they stopped at it. By the way, four-way stop does not mean that you have to wait for three more cars to stop before you can move through the intersection. It’s not rocket science; however, there are a few contingencies which might make it akin to computer programming.
First, the definition of “stop” is: none of your wheels are turning. (“Rolling stop” is an oxymoron that has no place in the lexicon of driving terminology.) That contingency might make it necessary for you to keep one eye on your rearview mirror in case the driver behind you thinks that “rolling stop” is a legitimate maneuver. This condition makes you realize a whole new meaning to the dictum “I got your back,” which in turn makes it difficult to recall which cars arrived at the intersection in which order.
Second, if you see that one of the drivers at the intersection is using a cell phone, you may have to assume that he/she doesn’t know who got to the intersection first either. In that case you may resort to hand-waving which may solve the problem of who goes first. Please note: you may be the type of person who opens the door for football players, but polite isn’t relative here. Do not wait for all of the other cars to go first unless you are sure that you got there last.
Fourth, one or more cars may actually arrive at the intersection at the same time. This isn’t the same as not knowing who arrived when. However, your perceptions of “the same time” may not be the same as someone else’s. You may be at the intersection with a Nascar driver wannabe who doesn’t comprehend second or third. If you suspect that you are at the intersection with one of those people, just pretend that you came in second or third, in spite of the usual regulation which prescribes that the car on the right goes first.
Fifth, in rare instances four cars might actually arrive at the intersection at the same time, which results in maneuvers similar to performing the Hokey-Pokey, or maybe it’s a square dancing routine that I am thinking of. I am sorry, but none of the rules apply since everyone is on someone’s right and since taking turns is going to require more than just holding up one, two, three, or four fingers. The way I see it everyone will be signaling “we’re number one.” You won’t see a peace sign anywhere.
For this contingency, I recommend carrying an empty pop bottle under your back seat, or brushing up on your Rock, Paper, Scissors skills. Another strategy is to make sure that you and three other cars are not arriving at the intersection simultaneously. The safest way to do that is to get there last. It’s not first, but it’s a strategy that gives you control over the situation. No one will try to beat you out of that position, and hey, believe it or not, the object is to get through the intersection without a bent fender.
The State of Utah Driver’s Handbook is mysteriously silent on the subject of four-way stops. Perhaps Utah drivers weren’t sleeping through four-way stop classes. Maybe there weren’t any, which might explain the general confusion at four-way stops. I did find this instruction on a website which describes some method for maneuvering a crowded four-way stop: “The alternating directions take turns. In other words, north and south go, then west and east. Those turning left yeild (original spelling maintained) to the car coming the opposite direction, just like with a green light.” I think that the instructions contained in the Utah Handbook are more helpful.
For your information, though, there are two pages of instructions in that handbook devoted to the maneuver of parallel parking. Now there is something that you can still manage to avoid without detouring through Colorado.
How to cope with medical shortfalls
The appearance of the first “medicine person” in the Butterbean family may have occurred back in the days when the Butterbeans’ immediate ancestors moved out to a ranch 15 miles away from the real doctor and when cars weren’t so dependable.
To get to the doctor’s office back then, you had to drive a car that had to be push-started, was liable to get a flat tire on the way there, and was usually out of gas. (My, how times have changed in the Butterbean family.)
After the car was up and on its way, someone had to drive over roads that were either sandy, muddy or washed out. (Walking through snow was reserved for children going to school—three miles uphill both ways.)
Then as now, our family had an impeccable history of becoming sick or maimed only on weekends when doctors go into hiding and it does you no good to drive to town anyway.
Since those days, there has always been at lest one bona fide, bone-wearing shaman among the generations of the Butterbean tribe. Come to think of it, it’s a wonder there isn’t a real doctor in the family. There is no shortage of aspirants.
Through the years, we have been known to consult the family shaman in cases of loose teeth, split fingernails, floor burns, road rashes, sprains, lacerations, nosebleeds, hay fever, dog bites, tick bites, and numerous other accidentally self-inflicted wounds—a fact which has made top executives of our medical insurance companies ever grateful.
Common treatments involved vitamin C, salt water, soap and water, rest in bed, band-aids when they could be located, fishing line, sport tape and elastic wraps.
Which brings us to the question of why do-it-yourself medicine is still practiced in the Butterbean family: neither I nor the insurance company can afford the real kind.
Somewhere between those days when it was impractical to drive to the doctor’s office and now when you will have a hard time paying for the service when you get there, were the days when it did you no good if you did go there.
If you are in my age bracket (usually the highest one), you will remember those days of general antibiotic hysteria when the only way you could get a prescription for an antibiotic was to show proof, be you living or dead, that you had “strep.” No other illness warranted the use of antibiotics. The only way to rule out all other strains of sore throat was to show up at the doctor’s for a throat culture. If it was positive, you were rewarded with antibiotics. If not, you were sent home with an aspirin in your hand.
My friend, who raised her children during the Great American Antibiotic Freeze, took her daughter to the doctor twice, two weeks running, with a sore throat. Each time she was charged the going rate and sent home with a handshake: “Congratulations, your daughter has the non-strep variety of sore throat.”
But my friend was getting smarter. The next time her daughter had a sore throat, she used her own strategy. No, she didn’t visit the family shaman. Instead of making an appointment, then driving to the doctor’s office and waiting in line, she telephoned him and reported that her daughter again had a sore throat and would he please add the usual $35 to her bill while she gave her daughter an aspirin.
In case you were wondering what the family shaman needed fishing line for (besides fishing of course); he has been known to suture his own lacerations for two reasons. He didn’t have strep, and he couldn’t find a band-aid.
To get to the doctor’s office back then, you had to drive a car that had to be push-started, was liable to get a flat tire on the way there, and was usually out of gas. (My, how times have changed in the Butterbean family.)
After the car was up and on its way, someone had to drive over roads that were either sandy, muddy or washed out. (Walking through snow was reserved for children going to school—three miles uphill both ways.)
Then as now, our family had an impeccable history of becoming sick or maimed only on weekends when doctors go into hiding and it does you no good to drive to town anyway.
Since those days, there has always been at lest one bona fide, bone-wearing shaman among the generations of the Butterbean tribe. Come to think of it, it’s a wonder there isn’t a real doctor in the family. There is no shortage of aspirants.
Through the years, we have been known to consult the family shaman in cases of loose teeth, split fingernails, floor burns, road rashes, sprains, lacerations, nosebleeds, hay fever, dog bites, tick bites, and numerous other accidentally self-inflicted wounds—a fact which has made top executives of our medical insurance companies ever grateful.
Common treatments involved vitamin C, salt water, soap and water, rest in bed, band-aids when they could be located, fishing line, sport tape and elastic wraps.
Which brings us to the question of why do-it-yourself medicine is still practiced in the Butterbean family: neither I nor the insurance company can afford the real kind.
Somewhere between those days when it was impractical to drive to the doctor’s office and now when you will have a hard time paying for the service when you get there, were the days when it did you no good if you did go there.
If you are in my age bracket (usually the highest one), you will remember those days of general antibiotic hysteria when the only way you could get a prescription for an antibiotic was to show proof, be you living or dead, that you had “strep.” No other illness warranted the use of antibiotics. The only way to rule out all other strains of sore throat was to show up at the doctor’s for a throat culture. If it was positive, you were rewarded with antibiotics. If not, you were sent home with an aspirin in your hand.
My friend, who raised her children during the Great American Antibiotic Freeze, took her daughter to the doctor twice, two weeks running, with a sore throat. Each time she was charged the going rate and sent home with a handshake: “Congratulations, your daughter has the non-strep variety of sore throat.”
But my friend was getting smarter. The next time her daughter had a sore throat, she used her own strategy. No, she didn’t visit the family shaman. Instead of making an appointment, then driving to the doctor’s office and waiting in line, she telephoned him and reported that her daughter again had a sore throat and would he please add the usual $35 to her bill while she gave her daughter an aspirin.
In case you were wondering what the family shaman needed fishing line for (besides fishing of course); he has been known to suture his own lacerations for two reasons. He didn’t have strep, and he couldn’t find a band-aid.
Just a little off base
A few people have asked me why I didn’t say something about this or the other thing in last week’s article about baseball caps. Well, it was getting a little too long and a little too late as it was.
But I was tempted to say that, great American past time notwithstanding, the best thing to come out of baseball may be the baseball cap.
Of course, we don’t live in a city or even a state that has a team in either big league so we are probably a little too far removed from all the action if there is any.
My son who lives further east than we do follows big-league baseball, but he lives within a couple of hours traveling time of four teams’ home ball parks. In addition to that, there is the Toledo Mud Hens also within that range, which team I was lucky enough to watch play.
But as sports go, baseball is one of them. A couple of my kids played baseball, so I have been to the park a few hundred times to watch the games. At least the games are held in the summer, as opposed to football and soccer, which sports aren’t perfect either as their games are on one end or the other of winter.
If your kid is the pitcher, watching baseball is an okay activity, unless he walks nine in a row. If he’s the right fielder, you are better off bringing along a supplementary amusement like a history book or a math assignment for the bottom halves of the innings in case things get a little slow.
Since we don’t really have any geographical ties to baseball, my kids were all over the ballpark when it came to picking a major league team to cheer for. They tended to pick their own baseball team fan caps based on color more than anything else, i.e. “I like blue, and I look good in blue; I’ll root for Boston. Besides that, my name starts with ‘B’.”
“Well, I’ll get a Yankees hat, even though, thank goodness, my name doesn’t start with ‘Y.’ Their hats just look the best.”
Similarly, I think my friend’s son was playing baseball, and not soccer, because “the boys just look so cute in their baseball suits.” I think that Bertha has already written about the pros and cons of baseball uniforms versus soccer gear. Baseball requires way too much equipment.
I don’t know whether it is baseball that has changed or whether I have. I used to follow the sport and at least watch the World Series along with everybody else. And, truth to tell, I don’t know whether one can truly be an American patriot and not like baseball.
American culture and social history would have a huge holes in it without baseball, its Hall of Fame, and the stories, movies, music and food associated with it—not to mention the influence of baseball on the English language.
Do you realize how many baseball idioms there are? You might have noticed a couple already in this article. But I’ll bet you could think of at least twenty once you got out of the dugout and started swinging.
When was the last time you didn’t go through a day (that would be a Yogiism right there) without “striking out” or “dropping the ball?” We can certainly hope for a few more “homeruns and “grand slams” than instances of “being caught off base” in that day though.
And if you think that this particular column is a swing and a miss, how would you like to pinch hit sometime?
Thankfully, it’s over when it’s over.
But I was tempted to say that, great American past time notwithstanding, the best thing to come out of baseball may be the baseball cap.
Of course, we don’t live in a city or even a state that has a team in either big league so we are probably a little too far removed from all the action if there is any.
My son who lives further east than we do follows big-league baseball, but he lives within a couple of hours traveling time of four teams’ home ball parks. In addition to that, there is the Toledo Mud Hens also within that range, which team I was lucky enough to watch play.
But as sports go, baseball is one of them. A couple of my kids played baseball, so I have been to the park a few hundred times to watch the games. At least the games are held in the summer, as opposed to football and soccer, which sports aren’t perfect either as their games are on one end or the other of winter.
If your kid is the pitcher, watching baseball is an okay activity, unless he walks nine in a row. If he’s the right fielder, you are better off bringing along a supplementary amusement like a history book or a math assignment for the bottom halves of the innings in case things get a little slow.
Since we don’t really have any geographical ties to baseball, my kids were all over the ballpark when it came to picking a major league team to cheer for. They tended to pick their own baseball team fan caps based on color more than anything else, i.e. “I like blue, and I look good in blue; I’ll root for Boston. Besides that, my name starts with ‘B’.”
“Well, I’ll get a Yankees hat, even though, thank goodness, my name doesn’t start with ‘Y.’ Their hats just look the best.”
Similarly, I think my friend’s son was playing baseball, and not soccer, because “the boys just look so cute in their baseball suits.” I think that Bertha has already written about the pros and cons of baseball uniforms versus soccer gear. Baseball requires way too much equipment.
I don’t know whether it is baseball that has changed or whether I have. I used to follow the sport and at least watch the World Series along with everybody else. And, truth to tell, I don’t know whether one can truly be an American patriot and not like baseball.
American culture and social history would have a huge holes in it without baseball, its Hall of Fame, and the stories, movies, music and food associated with it—not to mention the influence of baseball on the English language.
Do you realize how many baseball idioms there are? You might have noticed a couple already in this article. But I’ll bet you could think of at least twenty once you got out of the dugout and started swinging.
When was the last time you didn’t go through a day (that would be a Yogiism right there) without “striking out” or “dropping the ball?” We can certainly hope for a few more “homeruns and “grand slams” than instances of “being caught off base” in that day though.
And if you think that this particular column is a swing and a miss, how would you like to pinch hit sometime?
Thankfully, it’s over when it’s over.
“Do you like my hat?”
I suppose there was a time when baseball caps were worn only for playing baseball. I should like to hear the complete and unabridged history of the invention and popularization of the baseball cap.
Just in case you feel the same way, let me tell you it isn’t in the encyclopedia. However if you google baseball cap history, you will return about 1,300.000 entries, which is a lot of history. The first and second sites disagreed on which baseball team first wore them, so history, schmistory, I made one up and here it is.
One hot summer day, at the height of baseball season, Ty Cobb (probably the earliest baseball players that I know of) complained to his manager that the sun got in his eyes when he stood in centerfield (if he played centerfield), and he needed something to shade his eyes. The manager took the problem to his wife who borrowed her son’s beanie and sewed a bill on it.
Ty was a pioneer who wasn’t afraid to show up in never-before-seen headgear, so he tried it out the next game, and it worked pretty well. The seamstress had the foresight to make it in the team’s colors, and the skill to put a block letter on the front of it.
Soon the left fielder and the second baseman wanted one too. And the catcher, who had been looking for something to keep his hair clean when he replaced his mask after throwing it in the dirt around home plate, asked for one too. It didn’t take him long to realize that wearing it backwards was about the only way he was going to be able to wear it at all. (Credit catchers with being first to wear baseball caps backwards.)
Fans and fishermen were probably the first to wear baseball caps off the playing field. Fans wanted to look just like Ty, and fishermen wanted a place to put their flies. From there it snowballed. Truck drivers began to wear them, as did farmers and bald men. Cowboys discovered that a baseball cap fit into the cab of a pickup truck better than a Stetson did, so baseball caps crossed over into the rigid realm of cowboy attire.
Sometime during the 70s it was discovered that the sun got into the eyes of women also, and so the baseball cap crossed another line—the gender line. About that same time denim pants crossed the same line, and one just followed the other.
Baseball caps began to appear in more types of social settings, and they began to be worn to make a fashion statement as well as a literal statement.
Which just about brings us up to the present. Everyone needs a few baseball caps in his or her wardrobe. One to wear to the mall, one to wear jogging, one for visiting friends, one for camp, one to wear to school outside of class, one to wear to work, and oh yes, one to wear to the ballgame.
You can say just about anything with your baseball cap, as well. But pay attention. Make sure that the cap you wear and the way you wear it, i.e. frontward, sideways, backward, inside out, makes the correct statement about your political preferences, your lifestyle, your socio-economic attachments, etc. If you think a baseball cap is neutral, you are mistaken. It can cross the gender line, but be careful about taking it across any other lines. It sits up there on top of your head like a billboard. It isn’t like a wallet that hides in your pocket. Make sure it makes the correct statement.
Well, not a bad reconstruction of history given the evidence in the closet, right? It was easy. Someone needed a sunshade in centerfield and the hat scene is changed for ever after.
I was thinking I could take this history thing a step further and tackle that more useless part of the baseball uniform—the stirrup—but I am having a hard time with it. Which baseball player walked up to his manager and said, “Hey Joe, now my socks don’t match my cap.”?
Just in case you feel the same way, let me tell you it isn’t in the encyclopedia. However if you google baseball cap history, you will return about 1,300.000 entries, which is a lot of history. The first and second sites disagreed on which baseball team first wore them, so history, schmistory, I made one up and here it is.
One hot summer day, at the height of baseball season, Ty Cobb (probably the earliest baseball players that I know of) complained to his manager that the sun got in his eyes when he stood in centerfield (if he played centerfield), and he needed something to shade his eyes. The manager took the problem to his wife who borrowed her son’s beanie and sewed a bill on it.
Ty was a pioneer who wasn’t afraid to show up in never-before-seen headgear, so he tried it out the next game, and it worked pretty well. The seamstress had the foresight to make it in the team’s colors, and the skill to put a block letter on the front of it.
Soon the left fielder and the second baseman wanted one too. And the catcher, who had been looking for something to keep his hair clean when he replaced his mask after throwing it in the dirt around home plate, asked for one too. It didn’t take him long to realize that wearing it backwards was about the only way he was going to be able to wear it at all. (Credit catchers with being first to wear baseball caps backwards.)
Fans and fishermen were probably the first to wear baseball caps off the playing field. Fans wanted to look just like Ty, and fishermen wanted a place to put their flies. From there it snowballed. Truck drivers began to wear them, as did farmers and bald men. Cowboys discovered that a baseball cap fit into the cab of a pickup truck better than a Stetson did, so baseball caps crossed over into the rigid realm of cowboy attire.
Sometime during the 70s it was discovered that the sun got into the eyes of women also, and so the baseball cap crossed another line—the gender line. About that same time denim pants crossed the same line, and one just followed the other.
Baseball caps began to appear in more types of social settings, and they began to be worn to make a fashion statement as well as a literal statement.
Which just about brings us up to the present. Everyone needs a few baseball caps in his or her wardrobe. One to wear to the mall, one to wear jogging, one for visiting friends, one for camp, one to wear to school outside of class, one to wear to work, and oh yes, one to wear to the ballgame.
You can say just about anything with your baseball cap, as well. But pay attention. Make sure that the cap you wear and the way you wear it, i.e. frontward, sideways, backward, inside out, makes the correct statement about your political preferences, your lifestyle, your socio-economic attachments, etc. If you think a baseball cap is neutral, you are mistaken. It can cross the gender line, but be careful about taking it across any other lines. It sits up there on top of your head like a billboard. It isn’t like a wallet that hides in your pocket. Make sure it makes the correct statement.
Well, not a bad reconstruction of history given the evidence in the closet, right? It was easy. Someone needed a sunshade in centerfield and the hat scene is changed for ever after.
I was thinking I could take this history thing a step further and tackle that more useless part of the baseball uniform—the stirrup—but I am having a hard time with it. Which baseball player walked up to his manager and said, “Hey Joe, now my socks don’t match my cap.”?
Dreams do have meaning, but only one
Half of the modern novels I’ve read have some chapter or scene where the hero has an intricate and convoluted dream which the author describes in great detail. They are usually about the character being in a large grassy field with mists or fog. I guess the reader is supposed to interpret the dream and understand what is going to happen next in the story line or what character traits the heroine has buried under layers of consciousness. I never get it. Even by the end of the book, I never get it.
Should I ever write a novel (not to worry) the dreams will have only one theme, which as near as I can tell from my real-life research and my personal observation is the only theme dreams ever come in. (Those novelists are up in the night.)
As you will notice, this is a timely as well as controversial subject, but as far as I am concerned, all dreams are about one thing—being late for class and not being able to get your locker open. Either you have forgotten the combination or it doesn’t work.
Don’t ever let anyone tell you that your school years are unimportant. You will literally be dreaming about them for the rest of your life.
Okay, there are variations on the theme, but they are all the same thing. You can’t get where you need to be (class or school) with all of your stuff and on time to save yourself.
One variation is the “I can’t remember my schedule” dream in which you keep trying to find clues to help you get where you need to be, but you can’t. You keep slogging around trying different classrooms or halls to see if any of them ring a bell, but they don’t. You can’t even find the principal’s office in order to ask someone what your schedule is. Or if during the odd dream you miraculously find it, they can’t find your schedule either.
Then there is the “I can’t get ready for school” dream in which you can’t find the right clothes or shoes, or you get to school and discover that you forgot the most important article of clothing—your pants (or when I went to school, your skirt).
There is also the “I forgot basketball tryouts” dream in which your friends find you after the fact and ask you why you weren’t at tryouts running multiple ladders like they were.
One more variant of the school dream is the one where you find, when you finally get to your class, that there is a 100-question test for which you are totally unprepared.
I guess fairly recent dream research (not similar to the kind I have done) has shown that people need to get the right kind of sleep so they can dream which in turn makes them well-adjusted and psychologically healthy. Well, either I am not getting the right kind of sleep or not dreaming the right kind of dreams because after one of the locked-locker dreams, I wake up in the middle of an anxiety attack. And that hardly feels healthy.
I have read that anxiety dreams are telling us about current behavior patterns or psychological imbalances that need to be corrected and also that they are present in people who are diagnosed with post traumatic stress disorder. What does all of this tell you about high school?
Well, I am not a psychologist, but it’s not that hard. High school is pure raw trauma—an experience from which you will probably never recover no matter how many times you dream about it which explains why you dream about it.
Your only hope is to have a subsequent traumatic experience which will eclipse the high school one and “graduate” your psychological imbalances so that you dream that you can never get to work on time with your trousers on.
Should I ever write a novel (not to worry) the dreams will have only one theme, which as near as I can tell from my real-life research and my personal observation is the only theme dreams ever come in. (Those novelists are up in the night.)
As you will notice, this is a timely as well as controversial subject, but as far as I am concerned, all dreams are about one thing—being late for class and not being able to get your locker open. Either you have forgotten the combination or it doesn’t work.
Don’t ever let anyone tell you that your school years are unimportant. You will literally be dreaming about them for the rest of your life.
Okay, there are variations on the theme, but they are all the same thing. You can’t get where you need to be (class or school) with all of your stuff and on time to save yourself.
One variation is the “I can’t remember my schedule” dream in which you keep trying to find clues to help you get where you need to be, but you can’t. You keep slogging around trying different classrooms or halls to see if any of them ring a bell, but they don’t. You can’t even find the principal’s office in order to ask someone what your schedule is. Or if during the odd dream you miraculously find it, they can’t find your schedule either.
Then there is the “I can’t get ready for school” dream in which you can’t find the right clothes or shoes, or you get to school and discover that you forgot the most important article of clothing—your pants (or when I went to school, your skirt).
There is also the “I forgot basketball tryouts” dream in which your friends find you after the fact and ask you why you weren’t at tryouts running multiple ladders like they were.
One more variant of the school dream is the one where you find, when you finally get to your class, that there is a 100-question test for which you are totally unprepared.
I guess fairly recent dream research (not similar to the kind I have done) has shown that people need to get the right kind of sleep so they can dream which in turn makes them well-adjusted and psychologically healthy. Well, either I am not getting the right kind of sleep or not dreaming the right kind of dreams because after one of the locked-locker dreams, I wake up in the middle of an anxiety attack. And that hardly feels healthy.
I have read that anxiety dreams are telling us about current behavior patterns or psychological imbalances that need to be corrected and also that they are present in people who are diagnosed with post traumatic stress disorder. What does all of this tell you about high school?
Well, I am not a psychologist, but it’s not that hard. High school is pure raw trauma—an experience from which you will probably never recover no matter how many times you dream about it which explains why you dream about it.
Your only hope is to have a subsequent traumatic experience which will eclipse the high school one and “graduate” your psychological imbalances so that you dream that you can never get to work on time with your trousers on.
How to make good use of commercial messages
I am sure that the world’s advertising agencies go to great trouble to make commercials that will make us all sit right up and pay attention for thirty seconds, a minute, or however long it is that ads run. I don’t suppose they are as long as they seem. If they were, there wouldn’t be any time left for regular programming because there are at least eight of them during a half-hour television show.
None of that is anything you didn’t already know, but even if the ads are only thirty seconds long, they are long enough to put me to sleep. When regular programming is on, I can stay awake. When an ad comes on, my eyes fall shut.
Ironically, the worst kind are the ones that promote sleep aids. The background music is restful; they feature people lying in comfortable-looking beds; even the colors and images are calming. Add all of that calmness to the fact that this same commercial has already aired six times during the last half hour and ended the same way every time—with the subject falling asleep—and hmmm, I have direct access to the thirty-second power nap.
And I don’t have to worry about missing any of my program because I always wake up at the end of the commercial during the enumeration of the product’s side effects. Now that part of the promotion is a little jarring to the nerves. Especially when they say, “in rare instances, this product may cause heart attack or stroke.”
That’s enough to wake me up and get me thinking about the possibility of having a stroke, and I further think that if I were going to have a stroke, I wouldn’t want to have it during a pharmaceutically-induced sleep session. I might miss “my program.”
After a few of those kind of commercials, I have resolved that I don’t want to take that kind of product ever, which is also ironic.
Who needs to take anything? You could just record a couple of commercials to play when you get in bed, making sure to edit out the parts about the side effects.
So, after a good night’s sleep plus or minus a few power naps, I might be found in my car going here and there. When I am driving, I listen to talk radio. Believe me, it has it’s share of commercial messages as well. Given the effect that television commercials have on me, I need to be careful about listening to radio commercials while I am driving—power naps and all notwithstanding. So far, my radio station is judicious enough to refrain from advertising sleep aids.
On the contrary, they often air “paid announcements” that serve to wake me right up. One of those is paid for some entity called “Save Our National Parks Foundation” or something like that. Obviously this commercial has failed to drive home to me what the name of the organization is, but their message I got: our national parks are in disrepair because they are underfunded, so please send money to improve them.
So, this is a little jarring to the nerves, and I think that commercials like this might give me a stroke. When Bertha, who is not well-known for her rationality but sometimes has a lucid thought, analyzes this commercial message, it comes out like this:
Say you own a really nice house. Someone more important that you are comes along and takes over the care and upkeep of your house because you might not know how to do that. Their rationale is that they have more resources and can do that better than you can. They pretend that you still own your house, but you don’t; in fact, you will have to get in line to visit it, and you will have to pay a fee to use it, You will have to pay not to use it also. Besides that you will have to pay for upkeep and expenses on it. But the party soon gets tired of spending the money that you give him on his house, and he wants to buy jet airplanes with it instead.
Consequently the repairs and maintenance have fallen behind. He implores a third party to beg you to send more money to fix up the house you don’t own so you can pay more money to visit or not visit a house that you don’t own that this time we are going to fix up. Promise.
And by the way, some of the money will be used to pay for this commercial message which you can record and play back whenever you need a non-pharmaceutical jolt to keep you awake.
None of that is anything you didn’t already know, but even if the ads are only thirty seconds long, they are long enough to put me to sleep. When regular programming is on, I can stay awake. When an ad comes on, my eyes fall shut.
Ironically, the worst kind are the ones that promote sleep aids. The background music is restful; they feature people lying in comfortable-looking beds; even the colors and images are calming. Add all of that calmness to the fact that this same commercial has already aired six times during the last half hour and ended the same way every time—with the subject falling asleep—and hmmm, I have direct access to the thirty-second power nap.
And I don’t have to worry about missing any of my program because I always wake up at the end of the commercial during the enumeration of the product’s side effects. Now that part of the promotion is a little jarring to the nerves. Especially when they say, “in rare instances, this product may cause heart attack or stroke.”
That’s enough to wake me up and get me thinking about the possibility of having a stroke, and I further think that if I were going to have a stroke, I wouldn’t want to have it during a pharmaceutically-induced sleep session. I might miss “my program.”
After a few of those kind of commercials, I have resolved that I don’t want to take that kind of product ever, which is also ironic.
Who needs to take anything? You could just record a couple of commercials to play when you get in bed, making sure to edit out the parts about the side effects.
So, after a good night’s sleep plus or minus a few power naps, I might be found in my car going here and there. When I am driving, I listen to talk radio. Believe me, it has it’s share of commercial messages as well. Given the effect that television commercials have on me, I need to be careful about listening to radio commercials while I am driving—power naps and all notwithstanding. So far, my radio station is judicious enough to refrain from advertising sleep aids.
On the contrary, they often air “paid announcements” that serve to wake me right up. One of those is paid for some entity called “Save Our National Parks Foundation” or something like that. Obviously this commercial has failed to drive home to me what the name of the organization is, but their message I got: our national parks are in disrepair because they are underfunded, so please send money to improve them.
So, this is a little jarring to the nerves, and I think that commercials like this might give me a stroke. When Bertha, who is not well-known for her rationality but sometimes has a lucid thought, analyzes this commercial message, it comes out like this:
Say you own a really nice house. Someone more important that you are comes along and takes over the care and upkeep of your house because you might not know how to do that. Their rationale is that they have more resources and can do that better than you can. They pretend that you still own your house, but you don’t; in fact, you will have to get in line to visit it, and you will have to pay a fee to use it, You will have to pay not to use it also. Besides that you will have to pay for upkeep and expenses on it. But the party soon gets tired of spending the money that you give him on his house, and he wants to buy jet airplanes with it instead.
Consequently the repairs and maintenance have fallen behind. He implores a third party to beg you to send more money to fix up the house you don’t own so you can pay more money to visit or not visit a house that you don’t own that this time we are going to fix up. Promise.
And by the way, some of the money will be used to pay for this commercial message which you can record and play back whenever you need a non-pharmaceutical jolt to keep you awake.
Who knew I was a morning person?
When I was a kid, everyone was a “morning person.” Night people were social outcasts. Well, at least our parents let us know that “early to bed, early to rise” described the expected norm.
When I got old enough, I was permitted to stay up only until the TV news was over at which time even the high school seniors went to bed. Next morning, breakfast was served at seven. Everyone came to breakfast. Everyone ate the same food, and everyone began his day thereafter.
Then someone shattered family life as we knew it by getting a grant and discovering that there are “morning people” and there are “night people.” Morning people like things the way they always were. They like to get up early, plan their day, then get their day’s work done, watch the news, and go to bed afterwards.
Night people are the ones who begin to come alive around nine p.m. They clean their rooms well after sundown. They call fellow night people to come over and make cookies after the news is over. They go shopping at midnight—to the stores that are open, which are only the video stores and the grocery stores, but that is enough to outfit a party.
I know all this because there are people of both kinds in my family. When they all lived at home, the night people stayed up at night, and the morning people got up in the morning. Guess who lost sleep on both ends?
I myself have been known to go to bed before the news begins. Now don’t start jumping to conclusions about my psychological makeup. If I don’t know what kind of person I am, neither does anyone else. I have also been known to stay up late with a good book. However, I do remember that back in the day I didn’t get much sleep when the night people were phoning or when Saturday Night Live was playing. Sometimes I just got up and ate cookies and read yearbooks with everyone else.
On the other hand, I didn’t sleep too well with morning piano practicing or the sounds of someone fixing breakfast. So I usually got out of bed and poured milk on the cereal before someone else poured it on the floor.
What could I say? The morning people had tradition on their side, and the night people had the studies in the medical journals on theirs. (Trying to turn a night person into a morning person can have long-term negative psychological effects, just as trying to turn a left-handed child into a right-handed one can.) And which is worse, a very sleepy mom or a bunch of neurotic kids?
I may have finally overcome the social pressures exerted by the night and morning people in my life who did their level best to turn me into a person of their own order. Perhaps I have blossomed into the kind of person I was meant to be—originally.
For a while there, after most of the kids left home, I rebounded and became an afternoon person—someone who goes to bed early and gets up late. It seemed that I should take advantage of the opportunity to get extra sleep whenever I could, just in case everyone moved back home again.
As for now, in case anyone cares, I seem to be a traditional morning person At least I find myself awake early most mornings trying to get a plan for the day, and ready for bed by the time the news comes on.
Speaking of which, I hear the ten o’clock news winding down right now. It must be time for me to be done here and to be going off to bed.
When I got old enough, I was permitted to stay up only until the TV news was over at which time even the high school seniors went to bed. Next morning, breakfast was served at seven. Everyone came to breakfast. Everyone ate the same food, and everyone began his day thereafter.
Then someone shattered family life as we knew it by getting a grant and discovering that there are “morning people” and there are “night people.” Morning people like things the way they always were. They like to get up early, plan their day, then get their day’s work done, watch the news, and go to bed afterwards.
Night people are the ones who begin to come alive around nine p.m. They clean their rooms well after sundown. They call fellow night people to come over and make cookies after the news is over. They go shopping at midnight—to the stores that are open, which are only the video stores and the grocery stores, but that is enough to outfit a party.
I know all this because there are people of both kinds in my family. When they all lived at home, the night people stayed up at night, and the morning people got up in the morning. Guess who lost sleep on both ends?
I myself have been known to go to bed before the news begins. Now don’t start jumping to conclusions about my psychological makeup. If I don’t know what kind of person I am, neither does anyone else. I have also been known to stay up late with a good book. However, I do remember that back in the day I didn’t get much sleep when the night people were phoning or when Saturday Night Live was playing. Sometimes I just got up and ate cookies and read yearbooks with everyone else.
On the other hand, I didn’t sleep too well with morning piano practicing or the sounds of someone fixing breakfast. So I usually got out of bed and poured milk on the cereal before someone else poured it on the floor.
What could I say? The morning people had tradition on their side, and the night people had the studies in the medical journals on theirs. (Trying to turn a night person into a morning person can have long-term negative psychological effects, just as trying to turn a left-handed child into a right-handed one can.) And which is worse, a very sleepy mom or a bunch of neurotic kids?
I may have finally overcome the social pressures exerted by the night and morning people in my life who did their level best to turn me into a person of their own order. Perhaps I have blossomed into the kind of person I was meant to be—originally.
For a while there, after most of the kids left home, I rebounded and became an afternoon person—someone who goes to bed early and gets up late. It seemed that I should take advantage of the opportunity to get extra sleep whenever I could, just in case everyone moved back home again.
As for now, in case anyone cares, I seem to be a traditional morning person At least I find myself awake early most mornings trying to get a plan for the day, and ready for bed by the time the news comes on.
Speaking of which, I hear the ten o’clock news winding down right now. It must be time for me to be done here and to be going off to bed.
Thursday, August 13, 2009
They do what with clunkers?
I am just dying to stroll into Scary Harry’s Used Car Emporium and say, “Boy, have I got a clunker for you!” Wouldn’t that just about give the “what-goes-around-comes-around axiom a whole new meaning?
Now I don’t know a whole lot about the Cash for Clunkers Program (I don’t think anyone does), but if I can find something funny about it, think what the late-night hosts are likely saying. I do think that you only get to buy the equivalent of two-seater lawn mowers with your cash, which means you might have enough to go ahead and do just that.
If you know me, you are likely surprised that I don’t have the Clunker Program thoroughly researched and dissected because even if I don’t have a qualifying clunker, one that I can unload on Scary Harry, I have had and driven my share of clunkers.
It is partly my own fault. I seem to be the only one in my family who considers that a car is a means of conveyance—a way to get to the grocery store and back again. Maybe you could use it to get to the ball game or the bank, too.
But my family members have collectively and separately held the mistaken idea that cars are for other things. Some of them think that the purpose of a car is to enhance your social position. Some think that a car is for saving. (Using it will only put mileage, scratches or dents on it.) And others think that cars are for fixing up, whether they run, or will ever run, or not.
I’m all for fixing a car if it doesn’t run or if it won’t pass inspection, but if it has a perfectly good black rubber steering wheel cover in it, I don’t see the point of putting on a new oak and chrome one.
Speaking of fixing cars, I’ve told Mr. B. many times that he should be in the auto parts business. The auto parts business is something I do know something about. I should. I have been sent to the parts store as many as five times for the same part. I know how the auto parts stores work. According to my calculations, it would cost about $1,364.000 to build a car from scratch using parts from the parts store. You might come out ahead buying the ingredients to make dinner at home, but don’t try it with a car.
One of the reasons, just one, that I have to go to the parts store so many times is that we look like we run a used car lot. (Don’t even think about unloading a clunker at the Butterbean car lot though.) Mr. B. belongs to the group of family members that thinks cars are for fixing up. Due to patriarchal authority, we have many cars that need fixing up.
We nearly got arrested once for abandoning the Duster. Well, it did look that bad, but it was only out of gas. We paid $50 for that car, and the officer told us we got took. Would we dust a Duster? No, we would fix it up.
Since we already have a fleet of lawn mowers (some of which run), I haven’t been thinking of trading in my SUV for one. Okay, I just now did a little research. My SUV does qualify, however by Butterbean standards it is hardly a clunker.
A clunker is a car that is so bad that it’s windshield wipers are falling off. We launched the left one into the Great Salt Lake once simply by turning them on. And speaking of wipers, I’ll bet that there have only been two cars in the state of Utah whose windshield wipers were activated by hitting a bump in the road, and we have owned both of them.
It takes two good men and a pipe wrench to open the windows in the pickup, but we don’t roll them up very often because when we do, the air pressure in the cab begins to decrease in spite of the fact that we have never yet gotten off the ground.
Now, I know that wipers and windows do not a clunker make, but neither do they a lawn mower make. And in the what-goes-around department, trading in for one does not a deal make either. It’s like throwing money out one car window and hauling it in the another. You are going to lose some along the way.
There is still the issue of what they do with the traded-in clunkers. I read that they run them on a solution that seizes the engine. I also heard that they are crushed and sold as scrap metal. Either way, the Butterbean car fixer-uppers are quite alarmed. What a waste of fixable cars.
So, if your car is going to qualify for the program, it has to be a gas guzzler, over 18 mpg combined city/highway, whatever that is; it has to run; and it has to have been manufactured after 1983.
Sounds like a perfectly good fixer-upper to me.
Now I don’t know a whole lot about the Cash for Clunkers Program (I don’t think anyone does), but if I can find something funny about it, think what the late-night hosts are likely saying. I do think that you only get to buy the equivalent of two-seater lawn mowers with your cash, which means you might have enough to go ahead and do just that.
If you know me, you are likely surprised that I don’t have the Clunker Program thoroughly researched and dissected because even if I don’t have a qualifying clunker, one that I can unload on Scary Harry, I have had and driven my share of clunkers.
It is partly my own fault. I seem to be the only one in my family who considers that a car is a means of conveyance—a way to get to the grocery store and back again. Maybe you could use it to get to the ball game or the bank, too.
But my family members have collectively and separately held the mistaken idea that cars are for other things. Some of them think that the purpose of a car is to enhance your social position. Some think that a car is for saving. (Using it will only put mileage, scratches or dents on it.) And others think that cars are for fixing up, whether they run, or will ever run, or not.
I’m all for fixing a car if it doesn’t run or if it won’t pass inspection, but if it has a perfectly good black rubber steering wheel cover in it, I don’t see the point of putting on a new oak and chrome one.
Speaking of fixing cars, I’ve told Mr. B. many times that he should be in the auto parts business. The auto parts business is something I do know something about. I should. I have been sent to the parts store as many as five times for the same part. I know how the auto parts stores work. According to my calculations, it would cost about $1,364.000 to build a car from scratch using parts from the parts store. You might come out ahead buying the ingredients to make dinner at home, but don’t try it with a car.
One of the reasons, just one, that I have to go to the parts store so many times is that we look like we run a used car lot. (Don’t even think about unloading a clunker at the Butterbean car lot though.) Mr. B. belongs to the group of family members that thinks cars are for fixing up. Due to patriarchal authority, we have many cars that need fixing up.
We nearly got arrested once for abandoning the Duster. Well, it did look that bad, but it was only out of gas. We paid $50 for that car, and the officer told us we got took. Would we dust a Duster? No, we would fix it up.
Since we already have a fleet of lawn mowers (some of which run), I haven’t been thinking of trading in my SUV for one. Okay, I just now did a little research. My SUV does qualify, however by Butterbean standards it is hardly a clunker.
A clunker is a car that is so bad that it’s windshield wipers are falling off. We launched the left one into the Great Salt Lake once simply by turning them on. And speaking of wipers, I’ll bet that there have only been two cars in the state of Utah whose windshield wipers were activated by hitting a bump in the road, and we have owned both of them.
It takes two good men and a pipe wrench to open the windows in the pickup, but we don’t roll them up very often because when we do, the air pressure in the cab begins to decrease in spite of the fact that we have never yet gotten off the ground.
Now, I know that wipers and windows do not a clunker make, but neither do they a lawn mower make. And in the what-goes-around department, trading in for one does not a deal make either. It’s like throwing money out one car window and hauling it in the another. You are going to lose some along the way.
There is still the issue of what they do with the traded-in clunkers. I read that they run them on a solution that seizes the engine. I also heard that they are crushed and sold as scrap metal. Either way, the Butterbean car fixer-uppers are quite alarmed. What a waste of fixable cars.
So, if your car is going to qualify for the program, it has to be a gas guzzler, over 18 mpg combined city/highway, whatever that is; it has to run; and it has to have been manufactured after 1983.
Sounds like a perfectly good fixer-upper to me.
Oh, what a ride!
After a long respite from going “up to the lake” to engage in that variety of water sports that requires a boat and a tow rope, I found myself doing just that today. The sky was clear, the sun was merciless, and getting wet didn’t seem like such an improbability after all, at least not for everyone else.
Those tube toys which resemble tire inner tubes, and which are pulled behind a ski boat were probably invented so that more people could have more fun. You don’t have to be able to balance on a slalom ski, or two skis, or get up on the wake board to be able to ride behind a boat on something. You just have to be able to get on and hang on.
All kinds of people are able to enjoy the sensation of air travel, even if they have no physical prowess whatsoever.
However, I think that when the tube gets loaded up and pulled along, the people who have the most fun are the observers who get to watch the riders from inside the boat. The tubes that are made for two riders seem to offer the most entertainment.
I watched two skinny twelve- or thirteen-year old boys get the ride of their lives today. I, in turn, had a laugh worth driving all the way up to the lake for. Two skinny boys don’t weigh the tube down much so it sits up high in the water. They sit a little higher yet, even though they try to spread out like syrup on a pancake.
The driver of the boat eases them into the ride gradually building up speed, and just when the “tubers” think they have mastered the sport and can let go of the handles and stand up or something, the skipper rises to the challenge and begins to take them down a notch or two.
Incidentally, he considers it his responsibility to thoroughly dunk the boys, so he executes a few high-speed loop-the-loops and S-curves embellished by sudden variations in speed in order to give them a good ride before he does. Pretty soon the boys are bouncing around like popping corn, with arms and legs flailing and projecting out of the pile in all directions.
They start out side by side, but soon aligning themselves properly becomes impossible. Boy 1 bounces on top of Boy 2 who is flailing a free arm behind his head trying to clear him off. In a second, Boy 2 is on top of Boy 1 who is trying to extricate himself from a wicked Half Nelson while struggling to keep his legs on the mat and hang onto the grips.
Then the boat’s “slingshot” maneuver has them both clinging to the uphill side of the tube with their legs fishtailing out behind them. A sudden change in speed and direction leaves it terribly off-centered, and its empty side bobs up out of the water.
The tubers execute a disjointed uphill crabwalk as soon as they feel the boat turn the other way, but not in time to stabilize the tube, which rises out of the water and flips over. Boy 1 is launched over the top of Boy 2 who is ejected at a lower altitude and is slowed by rhythmic skipping over the water like a flat rock, getting introduced to the phenomenon of surface tension outside of science class.
It was a good ride, with the boys trading places on the tube a total of three times.
Just as comical is watching the tube loaded up with a much bigger rider on one side and a light-weight on the other. (It’s kind of like me sleeping in bed with Mr. B.) The lighter rider has all kinds of trouble keeping to his side of the tube. It is largely irrelevant though because soon the tube will be tipped over anyway.
What a tough bunch of kids! Might as well put them through the wringer. All of those dunked doughnuts remind me of why I wasn’t sure about getting in the water in the first place.
Those tube toys which resemble tire inner tubes, and which are pulled behind a ski boat were probably invented so that more people could have more fun. You don’t have to be able to balance on a slalom ski, or two skis, or get up on the wake board to be able to ride behind a boat on something. You just have to be able to get on and hang on.
All kinds of people are able to enjoy the sensation of air travel, even if they have no physical prowess whatsoever.
However, I think that when the tube gets loaded up and pulled along, the people who have the most fun are the observers who get to watch the riders from inside the boat. The tubes that are made for two riders seem to offer the most entertainment.
I watched two skinny twelve- or thirteen-year old boys get the ride of their lives today. I, in turn, had a laugh worth driving all the way up to the lake for. Two skinny boys don’t weigh the tube down much so it sits up high in the water. They sit a little higher yet, even though they try to spread out like syrup on a pancake.
The driver of the boat eases them into the ride gradually building up speed, and just when the “tubers” think they have mastered the sport and can let go of the handles and stand up or something, the skipper rises to the challenge and begins to take them down a notch or two.
Incidentally, he considers it his responsibility to thoroughly dunk the boys, so he executes a few high-speed loop-the-loops and S-curves embellished by sudden variations in speed in order to give them a good ride before he does. Pretty soon the boys are bouncing around like popping corn, with arms and legs flailing and projecting out of the pile in all directions.
They start out side by side, but soon aligning themselves properly becomes impossible. Boy 1 bounces on top of Boy 2 who is flailing a free arm behind his head trying to clear him off. In a second, Boy 2 is on top of Boy 1 who is trying to extricate himself from a wicked Half Nelson while struggling to keep his legs on the mat and hang onto the grips.
Then the boat’s “slingshot” maneuver has them both clinging to the uphill side of the tube with their legs fishtailing out behind them. A sudden change in speed and direction leaves it terribly off-centered, and its empty side bobs up out of the water.
The tubers execute a disjointed uphill crabwalk as soon as they feel the boat turn the other way, but not in time to stabilize the tube, which rises out of the water and flips over. Boy 1 is launched over the top of Boy 2 who is ejected at a lower altitude and is slowed by rhythmic skipping over the water like a flat rock, getting introduced to the phenomenon of surface tension outside of science class.
It was a good ride, with the boys trading places on the tube a total of three times.
Just as comical is watching the tube loaded up with a much bigger rider on one side and a light-weight on the other. (It’s kind of like me sleeping in bed with Mr. B.) The lighter rider has all kinds of trouble keeping to his side of the tube. It is largely irrelevant though because soon the tube will be tipped over anyway.
What a tough bunch of kids! Might as well put them through the wringer. All of those dunked doughnuts remind me of why I wasn’t sure about getting in the water in the first place.
Safe haven for all God's creatures
Safe haven for all God’s creatures
Knowing how we in this part of the country are all partial to keeping animals—horses, dogs, cats, mice, etc. I thought I would tell you the story of our one and only cat. We were able to keep that cat for about a day and a half.
Needless to say, we have plenty of mice out here in the hinterlands, and we needed a cat—or better mousetraps. Unfortunately our dog Steve was pretty sure that we didn’t need a cat. Actually he was pretty sure we didn’t need any animals on the place except for him. He kept the deer, the wild turkeys and the neighbors at bay whenever they passed too close to what he considered the boundaries of our, or maybe his, domain.
In spite of Steve’s antipathy toward extraneous animals (except of course for mice), when an estranged neighbor offered to give us an offspring of her mama cat which was an excellent mouser, it took only a small bribe to get us to take the little thing.
I must further explain that we happily negotiated on the amount of the bribe because we had just spent a rugged couple of weeks characterized by elevated mouse-in-the-house sightings with me passing a good part of that time standing on a chair. Where was Steve when mice were prowling around the perimeter?
Steve also neglected to keep the other natural rodent predators, besides cats, out of the house. Yes, I could be found standing on the dining table when a pretentious snake came inside, ostensibly looking for dinner. (He probably thought he had found the sushi bar.) That is another story, but we came down considerably from our asking price when I came down from the table.
True to form, Steve didn’t take to the cat. One or the other of them had to be penned up, and Steve knew he had seniority. Whenever we tried to encourage the two natural enemies to be friends, somebody got scratched or bit. Usually me. The cat soon learned to stay away from the dog. At least she could run inside the proverbial mouse hole when Steve happened to notice her.
We didn’t see her much that Saturday. She came down from a tree or from under the car when she got hungry.
The next day being Sunday with church on the docket, no one paid much attention to either the cat or the dog. Everyone was too busy finding his shoes or ironing his clothes to worry about a couple of animals that were outside and therefore out of mind.
When Mr. B. said the car was leaving, with or without all of us, we piled in and off we went down the canyon to the church, 15 miles away.
As usual, we arrived at the church with negative three minutes to spare so we hustled inside. Back at home after church, someone, namely me, wondered where the cat had gone. No one had seen her all day. We called her and coaxed her. We shut Steve in his doghouse to see whether that would precipitate her appearance, but she had seemingly vanished.
We got the family together and held a conference. Where was the last place the cat had been seen? And the last time?
“The last time I saw her, she was jumping down from on top of the spare tire under the car.--“
“Is that where she was hiding when she went under the car? Someone see if that’s where she is now.”
No cat.
Youngest child: “I saw a cat that looked like her down at the church.”
“What?”
Child two: “So did I. ”
Ding-a ling-a-ling.
“Why didn’t you say so? Where at the church?”
“She was running fast toward the field next to the parking lot. Oh-oh.”
---We went back to try to find her, but no cat. I just hope the neighbor who gave her to us didn’t find her there.
Knowing how we in this part of the country are all partial to keeping animals—horses, dogs, cats, mice, etc. I thought I would tell you the story of our one and only cat. We were able to keep that cat for about a day and a half.
Needless to say, we have plenty of mice out here in the hinterlands, and we needed a cat—or better mousetraps. Unfortunately our dog Steve was pretty sure that we didn’t need a cat. Actually he was pretty sure we didn’t need any animals on the place except for him. He kept the deer, the wild turkeys and the neighbors at bay whenever they passed too close to what he considered the boundaries of our, or maybe his, domain.
In spite of Steve’s antipathy toward extraneous animals (except of course for mice), when an estranged neighbor offered to give us an offspring of her mama cat which was an excellent mouser, it took only a small bribe to get us to take the little thing.
I must further explain that we happily negotiated on the amount of the bribe because we had just spent a rugged couple of weeks characterized by elevated mouse-in-the-house sightings with me passing a good part of that time standing on a chair. Where was Steve when mice were prowling around the perimeter?
Steve also neglected to keep the other natural rodent predators, besides cats, out of the house. Yes, I could be found standing on the dining table when a pretentious snake came inside, ostensibly looking for dinner. (He probably thought he had found the sushi bar.) That is another story, but we came down considerably from our asking price when I came down from the table.
True to form, Steve didn’t take to the cat. One or the other of them had to be penned up, and Steve knew he had seniority. Whenever we tried to encourage the two natural enemies to be friends, somebody got scratched or bit. Usually me. The cat soon learned to stay away from the dog. At least she could run inside the proverbial mouse hole when Steve happened to notice her.
We didn’t see her much that Saturday. She came down from a tree or from under the car when she got hungry.
The next day being Sunday with church on the docket, no one paid much attention to either the cat or the dog. Everyone was too busy finding his shoes or ironing his clothes to worry about a couple of animals that were outside and therefore out of mind.
When Mr. B. said the car was leaving, with or without all of us, we piled in and off we went down the canyon to the church, 15 miles away.
As usual, we arrived at the church with negative three minutes to spare so we hustled inside. Back at home after church, someone, namely me, wondered where the cat had gone. No one had seen her all day. We called her and coaxed her. We shut Steve in his doghouse to see whether that would precipitate her appearance, but she had seemingly vanished.
We got the family together and held a conference. Where was the last place the cat had been seen? And the last time?
“The last time I saw her, she was jumping down from on top of the spare tire under the car.--“
“Is that where she was hiding when she went under the car? Someone see if that’s where she is now.”
No cat.
Youngest child: “I saw a cat that looked like her down at the church.”
“What?”
Child two: “So did I. ”
Ding-a ling-a-ling.
“Why didn’t you say so? Where at the church?”
“She was running fast toward the field next to the parking lot. Oh-oh.”
---We went back to try to find her, but no cat. I just hope the neighbor who gave her to us didn’t find her there.
Monday, June 15, 2009
Naming the family cars just got a little harder
What’s in a name? I assume that the naming of people, animals, boats, etc. became necessary when there came to be more than one of the same kind in a person’s domain.
If there were two girls in the family, something more specific than Girl was required if you were going to want to refer to just one of them. If a man had two horses, he had to name them if he were going to talk about them or to them.
There came a time in the history of the world, also, when it became expedient for man to name his cars. In the old days you said, “ I am going for a ride in the car,” as opposed to the bicycle, the scooter or the washing machine. There was only one car.
But when households accumulated more than one vehicle, it became necessary to differentiate between them. You could say you were going for a ride in the Ford unless you had two of them. Or you could say you were going for a ride in the white car unless you were partial to white vehicles. Or you could even be more specific and say you were going for a ride in the sports car.
But it is just more personal, creative and practical to give your vehicle an appropriate name. Then you are able to announce precisely, and to no one’s confusion, just exactly in which car you are going to ride.
It prevents annoying problems like running off in the car that someone else wants to use, or running off with someone else’s wallet, planner, lunch or lunch money that have been left in “the car.” (In the Butterbean family, car-hopping has nothing to do with Dairy Queens.)
The best names are clever, descriptive and concise. You can probably pass the naming duties along to the teen-agers in your family if you have been remiss or aren’t quite up to the task. They are clever. Just ask them.
If you are lacking in imagination, I am herewith passing on a list of witty car names along with a basic description so you get the idea. You should be able to take inspiration from this collection:
The Iguana is long and green with scales. The Pickle is also long and green, but with bumps. (Old, long and green is particularly stimulating to teenagers.)
The Gadget Mobile is equipped with every available option. The Rammer is one long, low muscle car. The Green Goose is a nearly-extinct Datsun hatchback. The Gray Ghost is back from the land of the dead.
The Rice Rocket is small and white and made in Japan. Orange Crush is a long-bed, heavy-haul pickup truck which is the perfect color for deer-hunting. The Dumpster has a dump-bed and is usually full of trash. The Twinkie is a yellow VW bus. The Marijuana Mobile is a van that is used to deliver flowers.
The Banana Boat is a yellow maxivan, and The Batmobile is the scariest car in town. The 8-1 refers to the truck with an 8.1 liter engine. You can see the advantage in not having to announce that you are going to drive “the truck with the 8.1 liter engine.”
You should be duly supplied with some inspiration now. Get naming while you have the chance. The spectrum of cars available for naming is rapidly getting narrower. There will be fewer kinds, fewer sizes, and fewer colors. What do you expect from government-issue?
You can forget names like Big Red, Black Beauty and Fast Eddy or anything else reminiscent of power, speed, or a dependence on gasoline.
But wait a minute, there would be greater challenge in naming cars when they are all carbon copies. Actually, I am getting into it already. What about The Sun Chip, or The Two-seater or Bioshock, or Bellybutton…no, I was not thinking of The Green Machine and neither were you.
If there were two girls in the family, something more specific than Girl was required if you were going to want to refer to just one of them. If a man had two horses, he had to name them if he were going to talk about them or to them.
There came a time in the history of the world, also, when it became expedient for man to name his cars. In the old days you said, “ I am going for a ride in the car,” as opposed to the bicycle, the scooter or the washing machine. There was only one car.
But when households accumulated more than one vehicle, it became necessary to differentiate between them. You could say you were going for a ride in the Ford unless you had two of them. Or you could say you were going for a ride in the white car unless you were partial to white vehicles. Or you could even be more specific and say you were going for a ride in the sports car.
But it is just more personal, creative and practical to give your vehicle an appropriate name. Then you are able to announce precisely, and to no one’s confusion, just exactly in which car you are going to ride.
It prevents annoying problems like running off in the car that someone else wants to use, or running off with someone else’s wallet, planner, lunch or lunch money that have been left in “the car.” (In the Butterbean family, car-hopping has nothing to do with Dairy Queens.)
The best names are clever, descriptive and concise. You can probably pass the naming duties along to the teen-agers in your family if you have been remiss or aren’t quite up to the task. They are clever. Just ask them.
If you are lacking in imagination, I am herewith passing on a list of witty car names along with a basic description so you get the idea. You should be able to take inspiration from this collection:
The Iguana is long and green with scales. The Pickle is also long and green, but with bumps. (Old, long and green is particularly stimulating to teenagers.)
The Gadget Mobile is equipped with every available option. The Rammer is one long, low muscle car. The Green Goose is a nearly-extinct Datsun hatchback. The Gray Ghost is back from the land of the dead.
The Rice Rocket is small and white and made in Japan. Orange Crush is a long-bed, heavy-haul pickup truck which is the perfect color for deer-hunting. The Dumpster has a dump-bed and is usually full of trash. The Twinkie is a yellow VW bus. The Marijuana Mobile is a van that is used to deliver flowers.
The Banana Boat is a yellow maxivan, and The Batmobile is the scariest car in town. The 8-1 refers to the truck with an 8.1 liter engine. You can see the advantage in not having to announce that you are going to drive “the truck with the 8.1 liter engine.”
You should be duly supplied with some inspiration now. Get naming while you have the chance. The spectrum of cars available for naming is rapidly getting narrower. There will be fewer kinds, fewer sizes, and fewer colors. What do you expect from government-issue?
You can forget names like Big Red, Black Beauty and Fast Eddy or anything else reminiscent of power, speed, or a dependence on gasoline.
But wait a minute, there would be greater challenge in naming cars when they are all carbon copies. Actually, I am getting into it already. What about The Sun Chip, or The Two-seater or Bioshock, or Bellybutton…no, I was not thinking of The Green Machine and neither were you.
My socks are one of a kind
Being as I wrote about shoes last week, I thought that I would move on up and report on the subject of socks. You may remember my fairly recent story about battling with the washing machine as well.
Although my washing machine didn’t quite eat one of my children, it does manage to regularly eat my socks. Fortunately, in recent years, it has not had to compete with a whole family of sock destructionists, which means that hanging on to socks is easier than it used to be.
You probably thought that socks were to be worn under shoes to keep feet warm and comfortable, didn’t you? My kids were quite inventive and devised a great number of alternative uses for socks which partly accounted for their disappearance, although they usually blamed the washer.
Socks can be used for grenades, footballs, baseballs, slippers, floor polishers, galoshes, skis, accessories for the backyard, sleeping bags for GI Joes, chewing materials for the dog, flyswatters, shoe trees, truce flags, kite tails and marble bags.
Fortunately some of those uses don’t necessarily require a complete pair of socks. However, when a kid needs a sock for a science experiment, he is not likely to look in the unmated sock basket. He is going to look in his sock drawer, and if he needs one sock, so be it.
Of course socks will come to sad ends that have nothing to do with being worn out under shoes when they are subjected to nuclear testing. And then the ones that aren’t blown up, chewed up, or dissolved, are just simply lost.
Lost! I am conducting my own personal investigation, and what I want to know is whether anyone has ever lost both socks of a pair. If you have I want to know about it.
Whose washer eats socks by the pair? My washer likes to consume one of this and one of that. The Butterbean demolition society operates that way as well. I never did see two GI Joes lying side by side in matching sleeping bags. It was rare that I saw real mates worn side by side on one kid’s two feet. Usually they wore the kind that “no one will notice they don’t match.”
Sometimes they wore the kind you would have to be colorblind not to notice they were mismatched. I used to select my kid’s school teachers based on their inability to distinguish colors. If there was one who was color blind, that was the one I wanted.
One of the dilemmas of life is deciding whether to throw away the remaining sock after the first one is lost, The alternative is to keep it, hoping the other one will turn up when the snow melts. But should you throw it out, its mate will turn up within the week.
By the same token, both socks of a pair do not wear out together. One day you will put your foot in one end and out the other of a sock. Close inspection of its mate, providing you can find it, will reveal a sock without a single blemish or a broken thread.
I fail to see how the “use it up or wear it out” adage applies here since it is kind of hard to use one sock of a pair at all in spite of what my grade schoolers used to do. So I tend to follow my own adage which is “throw it out and buy a new one (or two).” It took me a few years of squirreling away unmated socks to come around to that attitude though. I finally found that by the time I found the lost one I couldn’t find the found one.
One of my kids used to leave a pair of socks in his snow boots every time he took them off. I guess they just slid off more easily that way. One day he wondered why he couldn’t get his foot back in. That was when he pulled five socks out of one boot and four out of the other. He should try that with rabbits sometime.
So you see why there were never neat little rows of mated socks in their drawers—the washer did it.
If there ever were pairs in their drawers, those were the ones they wore outside in the rain or used to polish their shoes, which partly explained their range of color. My kids got to wear white socks once for each new pair. After that they could be any color.
Although my washing machine didn’t quite eat one of my children, it does manage to regularly eat my socks. Fortunately, in recent years, it has not had to compete with a whole family of sock destructionists, which means that hanging on to socks is easier than it used to be.
You probably thought that socks were to be worn under shoes to keep feet warm and comfortable, didn’t you? My kids were quite inventive and devised a great number of alternative uses for socks which partly accounted for their disappearance, although they usually blamed the washer.
Socks can be used for grenades, footballs, baseballs, slippers, floor polishers, galoshes, skis, accessories for the backyard, sleeping bags for GI Joes, chewing materials for the dog, flyswatters, shoe trees, truce flags, kite tails and marble bags.
Fortunately some of those uses don’t necessarily require a complete pair of socks. However, when a kid needs a sock for a science experiment, he is not likely to look in the unmated sock basket. He is going to look in his sock drawer, and if he needs one sock, so be it.
Of course socks will come to sad ends that have nothing to do with being worn out under shoes when they are subjected to nuclear testing. And then the ones that aren’t blown up, chewed up, or dissolved, are just simply lost.
Lost! I am conducting my own personal investigation, and what I want to know is whether anyone has ever lost both socks of a pair. If you have I want to know about it.
Whose washer eats socks by the pair? My washer likes to consume one of this and one of that. The Butterbean demolition society operates that way as well. I never did see two GI Joes lying side by side in matching sleeping bags. It was rare that I saw real mates worn side by side on one kid’s two feet. Usually they wore the kind that “no one will notice they don’t match.”
Sometimes they wore the kind you would have to be colorblind not to notice they were mismatched. I used to select my kid’s school teachers based on their inability to distinguish colors. If there was one who was color blind, that was the one I wanted.
One of the dilemmas of life is deciding whether to throw away the remaining sock after the first one is lost, The alternative is to keep it, hoping the other one will turn up when the snow melts. But should you throw it out, its mate will turn up within the week.
By the same token, both socks of a pair do not wear out together. One day you will put your foot in one end and out the other of a sock. Close inspection of its mate, providing you can find it, will reveal a sock without a single blemish or a broken thread.
I fail to see how the “use it up or wear it out” adage applies here since it is kind of hard to use one sock of a pair at all in spite of what my grade schoolers used to do. So I tend to follow my own adage which is “throw it out and buy a new one (or two).” It took me a few years of squirreling away unmated socks to come around to that attitude though. I finally found that by the time I found the lost one I couldn’t find the found one.
One of my kids used to leave a pair of socks in his snow boots every time he took them off. I guess they just slid off more easily that way. One day he wondered why he couldn’t get his foot back in. That was when he pulled five socks out of one boot and four out of the other. He should try that with rabbits sometime.
So you see why there were never neat little rows of mated socks in their drawers—the washer did it.
If there ever were pairs in their drawers, those were the ones they wore outside in the rain or used to polish their shoes, which partly explained their range of color. My kids got to wear white socks once for each new pair. After that they could be any color.
Thursday, June 11, 2009
Need a simple character reference?
My kids think that they can tell all about a person by the shoes he/she wears. I think that someone once said that you have to walk a few miles in some of those shoes in order to understand that much, but I will allow that they are on the right track. Track.
They fully understand the importance of the right shoe to one’s social standing and relative well-being. I know because I have been shopping with them. Well, at the very least, shoes are indicative of one’s taste and style, not to mention one’s preferences in sports and exercise.
The shoe industry has certainly kept pace (pun) with every other segment of the fashion industry in terms of what it has to offer and to whom.
When I was a kid, we had two pair of shoes, one for church and one for everything else. If you had school shoes, they were just borrowed from one of those two categories and renamed.
Not anymore. Name a sport, and they make a shoe for it; which is good, I guess, if you have big closets and wallets. In fact, I challenge you to think of any activity for which they don’t make some kind of footgear. You might have to resort to catalogs or the internet to get them, but they are out there in abundance.
The name of your game is just one factor in choosing a shoe, however. You also have your image to consider. Say you need court shoes so you can sit around and watch TV.
Just what image do you want to adopt for TV watching? Something Kobe Bryant-ish; or maybe something a little more Tiger Woods, off the course that is, because golf shoes really wouldn’t be appropriate for taking in an “American Idol” segment.
Or say you need a pair for walking around in the mall. A comfortable pair of skater hightops would be just the thing. After all, you wouldn’t want to be sending out confusing messages. How my kids think they can tell so much about a person by his shoes is a mystery to me. Of course, I am rather uninformed and image-challenged.
At an outdoor theatrical production a few years ago, my daughters staked out positions right next to the flow of foot traffic so they could play their shoe game.
They lay on blankets on their front sides, and kicked off their own shoes. With their chins in their hands, they watched the feet go by. The object of the game was to see whether they can guess what kind of people have their feet in the shoes on review. Their whispered conversation went something like this:
“Oh look, this guy must be really cool. I saw his shoes in “GQ” (I don’t know why they read “GQ”), and they are so awesome. I wonder where he got them. Not around here for sure.” They all surreptitiously check out the wearer of the shoes.
“See, I told you he was cool.”
“And check these out. This guy must play basketball for U-state. They have their shoes specially-made, and no one has them just like that.” (I don’t know where she read that, maybe in “UQ.”) By craning their necks hard, they are able to take the guy in, clear up to his Adam’s apple.
“Whoa! I have to be right; he has to play for someone.”
“Hey look, this person is pretty cool. She has shoes just like mine” There was a tinge of disappointment registered in that announcement.
“Wait! They are mine!”
In stead of looking up to see who was wearing the shoes in question, she whipped her head around to see whether her own new sandals were still in the pile. They weren’t.
My daughter’s adult chaperone had quietly sneaked around behind the girls, put on her shoes, even though they fit like heck, and got in the line of traffic. All she had to do was keep on walking until she passed the gamers. (By then she was feeling really cool herself.)
My daughter was convinced that she was the first and only one in the Intermountain West to have sandals just like the ones she saw parading in front of her. For one bleak second she thought that someone else had found them too.
But that was only for a second. After she was satisfied that the wearer of the coolest sandals ever was not a usurper or the Intermountain Shoe Burglar in person, she steadied her breathing and was able to resume her position as “the coolest of all,” with her dignity and image mostly intact.
They fully understand the importance of the right shoe to one’s social standing and relative well-being. I know because I have been shopping with them. Well, at the very least, shoes are indicative of one’s taste and style, not to mention one’s preferences in sports and exercise.
The shoe industry has certainly kept pace (pun) with every other segment of the fashion industry in terms of what it has to offer and to whom.
When I was a kid, we had two pair of shoes, one for church and one for everything else. If you had school shoes, they were just borrowed from one of those two categories and renamed.
Not anymore. Name a sport, and they make a shoe for it; which is good, I guess, if you have big closets and wallets. In fact, I challenge you to think of any activity for which they don’t make some kind of footgear. You might have to resort to catalogs or the internet to get them, but they are out there in abundance.
The name of your game is just one factor in choosing a shoe, however. You also have your image to consider. Say you need court shoes so you can sit around and watch TV.
Just what image do you want to adopt for TV watching? Something Kobe Bryant-ish; or maybe something a little more Tiger Woods, off the course that is, because golf shoes really wouldn’t be appropriate for taking in an “American Idol” segment.
Or say you need a pair for walking around in the mall. A comfortable pair of skater hightops would be just the thing. After all, you wouldn’t want to be sending out confusing messages. How my kids think they can tell so much about a person by his shoes is a mystery to me. Of course, I am rather uninformed and image-challenged.
At an outdoor theatrical production a few years ago, my daughters staked out positions right next to the flow of foot traffic so they could play their shoe game.
They lay on blankets on their front sides, and kicked off their own shoes. With their chins in their hands, they watched the feet go by. The object of the game was to see whether they can guess what kind of people have their feet in the shoes on review. Their whispered conversation went something like this:
“Oh look, this guy must be really cool. I saw his shoes in “GQ” (I don’t know why they read “GQ”), and they are so awesome. I wonder where he got them. Not around here for sure.” They all surreptitiously check out the wearer of the shoes.
“See, I told you he was cool.”
“And check these out. This guy must play basketball for U-state. They have their shoes specially-made, and no one has them just like that.” (I don’t know where she read that, maybe in “UQ.”) By craning their necks hard, they are able to take the guy in, clear up to his Adam’s apple.
“Whoa! I have to be right; he has to play for someone.”
“Hey look, this person is pretty cool. She has shoes just like mine” There was a tinge of disappointment registered in that announcement.
“Wait! They are mine!”
In stead of looking up to see who was wearing the shoes in question, she whipped her head around to see whether her own new sandals were still in the pile. They weren’t.
My daughter’s adult chaperone had quietly sneaked around behind the girls, put on her shoes, even though they fit like heck, and got in the line of traffic. All she had to do was keep on walking until she passed the gamers. (By then she was feeling really cool herself.)
My daughter was convinced that she was the first and only one in the Intermountain West to have sandals just like the ones she saw parading in front of her. For one bleak second she thought that someone else had found them too.
But that was only for a second. After she was satisfied that the wearer of the coolest sandals ever was not a usurper or the Intermountain Shoe Burglar in person, she steadied her breathing and was able to resume her position as “the coolest of all,” with her dignity and image mostly intact.
Tuesday, May 19, 2009
Negotiating the “security” gauntlet
There is no such thing as a non-stop flight anymore. What that does to the flying population is introduce them all to the inside of an ever-increasing number of airport terminals.
I don’t think that they will ever get overly familiar with them though. During our trip last week, the PA announcer requested that if there were anyone in the airport who spoke Spanish, they were needed at the southwest baggage service area. Well, I don’t speak much Spanish, but conjugating the verb “volar” would be easier than telling which direction was southwest.
It also means that whenever they book a destination, they are going to have to take off and land more than once. That part of the experience gives many people ascent/descent disease which is characterized by white knuckles, sweaty palms, and anxiety.
But all that is nothing to compare with the experience of negotiating airline security which causes the onset of hysteria. Thankfully travelers only have to do that once per destination.
I wouldn’t want to discourage you, but in case you haven’t flown in the last ten years, this is how it goes.
First you stand in one of the lines which they try to make you think is short. They do that by guiding you through a narrow maze of ninety degree turns like the ordering line at Wendy’s. By the time you have arrived at checkpoint A, you have already traveled 50 feet in detours which is a good ten feet as the crow flies. At Wendy’s, however, you get a juicy hamburger at the end of the line.
At airport security they tempt you with this delectable treat: you are abandoned barefoot and standing at the tail end of a high-speed conveyor belt with your driver’s license between your teeth, your hat on sideways and your belongings piling up on your unprotected toes.
When you finally gather up all of your clothing and other necessities, it is your job to get dressed while hopping quickly away from the unloading area which is a bleak, uncarpeted, and chairless space where spectators watch you try to dress using no available extremities, with or without opposable thumbs, while hopping around on one foot.
Believe it or not, emerging on the other side of “security” with half of your clothes in your hand means that the worst part of the ordeal is over. If you were still in there somewhere--in the uncharted reaches of “security”--someone would be trying on your underwear, weighing your bag of Barbie toiletries, and confiscating (recycling) your nail clippers and your key chain while the agent at your gate half a mile away is boarding rows ten and higher.
Entering “security” is about the same as leaving, only you are apt to drop your picture ID three times while trying to trap it against your slippery toiletries bag with your opposable thumb while removing everything from the pocket on the opposing side of your body with your opposable thumb stuck on the outside.
Last week when we were obliged to go through airport security, every time I turned around, literally, Mr. B.’s driver’s license was on the floor. Mine, incidentally, was behind my ear.
So the Columbus Airport (CMH) has one of the worst areas that I have ever had the misfortune to emerge from security into. Right out of the X-ray machine and just past the conveyor belt you are faced with an escalator. People ahead of me were in various stages of undress all the way up it and around the corners toward the gates where airport personnel in charge of customer satisfaction had most conveniently placed some chairs. Remember you are shoeless, dragging a bag or two which you have not had time to properly close, and holding your pants up like a hip-hopper.
So naturally I complained to Mr. B. that I was afraid that my sagging socks were going to get caught in the escalator.
“Do you want me to carry you?” he asked.
I checked the availability of his opposable thumbs, rolled my eyes and replied, “Not with the way you drop things.”
I don’t think that they will ever get overly familiar with them though. During our trip last week, the PA announcer requested that if there were anyone in the airport who spoke Spanish, they were needed at the southwest baggage service area. Well, I don’t speak much Spanish, but conjugating the verb “volar” would be easier than telling which direction was southwest.
It also means that whenever they book a destination, they are going to have to take off and land more than once. That part of the experience gives many people ascent/descent disease which is characterized by white knuckles, sweaty palms, and anxiety.
But all that is nothing to compare with the experience of negotiating airline security which causes the onset of hysteria. Thankfully travelers only have to do that once per destination.
I wouldn’t want to discourage you, but in case you haven’t flown in the last ten years, this is how it goes.
First you stand in one of the lines which they try to make you think is short. They do that by guiding you through a narrow maze of ninety degree turns like the ordering line at Wendy’s. By the time you have arrived at checkpoint A, you have already traveled 50 feet in detours which is a good ten feet as the crow flies. At Wendy’s, however, you get a juicy hamburger at the end of the line.
At airport security they tempt you with this delectable treat: you are abandoned barefoot and standing at the tail end of a high-speed conveyor belt with your driver’s license between your teeth, your hat on sideways and your belongings piling up on your unprotected toes.
When you finally gather up all of your clothing and other necessities, it is your job to get dressed while hopping quickly away from the unloading area which is a bleak, uncarpeted, and chairless space where spectators watch you try to dress using no available extremities, with or without opposable thumbs, while hopping around on one foot.
Believe it or not, emerging on the other side of “security” with half of your clothes in your hand means that the worst part of the ordeal is over. If you were still in there somewhere--in the uncharted reaches of “security”--someone would be trying on your underwear, weighing your bag of Barbie toiletries, and confiscating (recycling) your nail clippers and your key chain while the agent at your gate half a mile away is boarding rows ten and higher.
Entering “security” is about the same as leaving, only you are apt to drop your picture ID three times while trying to trap it against your slippery toiletries bag with your opposable thumb while removing everything from the pocket on the opposing side of your body with your opposable thumb stuck on the outside.
Last week when we were obliged to go through airport security, every time I turned around, literally, Mr. B.’s driver’s license was on the floor. Mine, incidentally, was behind my ear.
So the Columbus Airport (CMH) has one of the worst areas that I have ever had the misfortune to emerge from security into. Right out of the X-ray machine and just past the conveyor belt you are faced with an escalator. People ahead of me were in various stages of undress all the way up it and around the corners toward the gates where airport personnel in charge of customer satisfaction had most conveniently placed some chairs. Remember you are shoeless, dragging a bag or two which you have not had time to properly close, and holding your pants up like a hip-hopper.
So naturally I complained to Mr. B. that I was afraid that my sagging socks were going to get caught in the escalator.
“Do you want me to carry you?” he asked.
I checked the availability of his opposable thumbs, rolled my eyes and replied, “Not with the way you drop things.”
Learn safety by accident?
After last week’s article on the perverseness of machinery, I thought it might be helpful to follow up with one on the subject of safety—for my own good.
I did a little research on the topic and found out two things. First, there are lots of people who are approximately at the same level of safety consciousness that I am; and, second, that there is a long list of organizations, agencies, and departments whose job it is no keep us all safe.
Owing to the fact that there is an internet (which itself has some safety issues) there are literally at my fingertips, and yours, thousands of sites to help educate us on the subject of safety. Reading some of them could cause you to fall asleep and hit your face on your keyboard. Others might cause you to fall down due to excessive laughter.
Some of the fall-down-laughing sites are the ones with titles like “Funny Insurance Claims.” Apparently the writing skills of the claimants directly correlate to their proneness to accidents. Ostensibly that factor doesn’t apply in my case.
Here are a few vehicle accident descriptions from the “Swap Meet Dave” website that I simply have to pass on:
1. The gentleman behind me struck me on the backside. He then went to rest in a bush with just his rear end showing.
2. As I approached an intersection a sign suddenly appeared in a place where no stop sign had ever appeared before. I was unable to stop in time to avoid the accident.
3. The accident occurred when I was attempting to bring my car out of a skid by steering it into the other vehicle.
4. I was backing my car out of the driveway in the usual manner, when it was struck by the other car in the same place it had been struck several times before.
5. I left for work this morning at 7 a.m. as usual when I collided straight into a bus. The bus was 5 minutes early.
I once read a consumer safety article which reported that most accidents happen either at work or at home or at play. I assume that this groundbreaking bit of information is available to the realm of human knowledge only because there was a study or two done to confirm it. I look at it this way: there isn’t much else besides the activity of sleeping and not too many people are using knives or machinery while they sleep.
I guess it is the work dimension of our lives that produces some of the most intensive programs for enhancing our safety. Maybe there is no such thing as an accident—only careless, and thoughtless behavior of which there must be plenty even outside of the Butterbean household. Safety engineers try to help us overcome those deficits by thinking and caring. To that end they devise checklists, forms, tips, disclaimers and reminders and slogans to keep us all safe and keep manufacturers out of court. .
These slogans were meant to get you thinking: “Crushed hands or missing fingers may affect your golf swing.”-- and “Protect your hands, you need them to pick up your paycheck.” I am adding “Don’t deserve a ‘break’ today.”
At my other job, I saw a six-page safety checklist for construction workers beginning a job which required a truck. I think the whole ideas of the lengthy form was to keep construction workers in the office filling out forms where injuries could be reduced to the kind for which they might not have to fill out the ten-page worker’s compensation claim form—injuries like paper cuts, writer’s cramp, bruises inflicted by keyboards, and headaches.
I did a little research on the topic and found out two things. First, there are lots of people who are approximately at the same level of safety consciousness that I am; and, second, that there is a long list of organizations, agencies, and departments whose job it is no keep us all safe.
Owing to the fact that there is an internet (which itself has some safety issues) there are literally at my fingertips, and yours, thousands of sites to help educate us on the subject of safety. Reading some of them could cause you to fall asleep and hit your face on your keyboard. Others might cause you to fall down due to excessive laughter.
Some of the fall-down-laughing sites are the ones with titles like “Funny Insurance Claims.” Apparently the writing skills of the claimants directly correlate to their proneness to accidents. Ostensibly that factor doesn’t apply in my case.
Here are a few vehicle accident descriptions from the “Swap Meet Dave” website that I simply have to pass on:
1. The gentleman behind me struck me on the backside. He then went to rest in a bush with just his rear end showing.
2. As I approached an intersection a sign suddenly appeared in a place where no stop sign had ever appeared before. I was unable to stop in time to avoid the accident.
3. The accident occurred when I was attempting to bring my car out of a skid by steering it into the other vehicle.
4. I was backing my car out of the driveway in the usual manner, when it was struck by the other car in the same place it had been struck several times before.
5. I left for work this morning at 7 a.m. as usual when I collided straight into a bus. The bus was 5 minutes early.
I once read a consumer safety article which reported that most accidents happen either at work or at home or at play. I assume that this groundbreaking bit of information is available to the realm of human knowledge only because there was a study or two done to confirm it. I look at it this way: there isn’t much else besides the activity of sleeping and not too many people are using knives or machinery while they sleep.
I guess it is the work dimension of our lives that produces some of the most intensive programs for enhancing our safety. Maybe there is no such thing as an accident—only careless, and thoughtless behavior of which there must be plenty even outside of the Butterbean household. Safety engineers try to help us overcome those deficits by thinking and caring. To that end they devise checklists, forms, tips, disclaimers and reminders and slogans to keep us all safe and keep manufacturers out of court. .
These slogans were meant to get you thinking: “Crushed hands or missing fingers may affect your golf swing.”-- and “Protect your hands, you need them to pick up your paycheck.” I am adding “Don’t deserve a ‘break’ today.”
At my other job, I saw a six-page safety checklist for construction workers beginning a job which required a truck. I think the whole ideas of the lengthy form was to keep construction workers in the office filling out forms where injuries could be reduced to the kind for which they might not have to fill out the ten-page worker’s compensation claim form—injuries like paper cuts, writer’s cramp, bruises inflicted by keyboards, and headaches.
Monday, April 27, 2009
Watch out for mulish machinery
I realize that the effectiveness of any mechanical or electrical tool is largely a function of the operator—that any machine is only a good as the “nut behind the wheel,” but I have come across some dangerous appliances in my life.
Not to worry too much. I don’t touch the really menacing ones like chainsaws or lawnmowers so I haven’t yet been hospitalized by anything from the machine shop; but my calling in life requires me to occasionally use washers, dryers, toasters, and irons, all of which can be spiteful.
And just so you don’t think that I am mechanically disabled and that to keep me safe members of my family have to operate all of the equipment for me, I am going to share a story on one of them as well as one on myself.
Everybody in my family cooks—not necessarily well, but they all get into the act. My teenaged daughter once literally got tangled up with the mixer. (No, this is not a story about mechanically braiding hair.) I believe it began with a rubber scraper in the left hand and a mixer in the right hand, and one too many samplings of the chocolate cake batter while mixing.
When the scraper got a little too close to the beaters, they jumped out and sucked the scraper right into the whirlpool, and the hand in charge got spun right in with it. From the other side of the room, there was little I could do to help. Actually, I was quite mesmerized by the whole chain of events and just stood staring.
I watched as she got the mixer stopped and her hand out of the maelstrom. I don’t usually express any other sentiment than fear, anxiety, or “losing it” when my kids have an accident, but this time I have to admit that my reaction was skewed, but not as much as her hand. When she held it up, there were fingers pointing in every direction and an unnatural backward declination in the middle of it all.
I am sorry to say that I burst out laughing and didn’t stop for quite some time, a blunder for which I have never been forgiven. I should have stuck with losing it. Happily the awry digits all eventually resumed their former positions, except for the index finger which has been pointed at me ever since.
As you can see, when they want to be, mechanical devices are diabolical. The following story is something of a family secret, and I have recounted it only once or twice. I think the seven-year statute of limitation has long since run out, so I can tell it without fear of being hauled off to jail. Only the passage of much time and some distance allow me to tell it now.
You mothers know what kind of schemes you resort to in order to get some work accomplished when you have a baby in tow and his preferred method being towed is on your hip. Entertaining baby becomes a rather desperate occupation sometimes.
Well, this particular baby was spellbound by the water swishing around in the washing machine. (Sort of like television except with the water element added.) So while I filled it, I let him sit on the adjacent mechanical device, the dryer. Mind you, I didn’t walk into the next room, nor was I distracted by the phone or anything else. My two feet were right in front of the dryer the whole time.
I bent down to pick up the next piece of laundry, and when I stood up, baby had vanished! I think it was like that scene in Lord of the Rings when Frodo stares into the water and keeps leaning toward it until he tips into the pool with the grateful dead or whatever they were called.
Well, you guessed it. What I saw of my baby was his two feet periscoped above the wash water, and they were agitating back and forth just like the towels were. At least there were two of something to grab which I quickly did and heaved. A spluttering, drenched, baby was hauled safely away from the depths of the beguiling and voracious washing machine. Luckily, Baby only sustained a few knots on the head and one tiny cut, but on a permanent basis he seems to be none the worse for wash-and-wear.
Nevertheless, this diatribe comes with the following warning:
Given its perversity, never operate mechanical equipment while under the influence of chocolate or while in any quantitative state of mental distraction or loss of mind.
Not to worry too much. I don’t touch the really menacing ones like chainsaws or lawnmowers so I haven’t yet been hospitalized by anything from the machine shop; but my calling in life requires me to occasionally use washers, dryers, toasters, and irons, all of which can be spiteful.
And just so you don’t think that I am mechanically disabled and that to keep me safe members of my family have to operate all of the equipment for me, I am going to share a story on one of them as well as one on myself.
Everybody in my family cooks—not necessarily well, but they all get into the act. My teenaged daughter once literally got tangled up with the mixer. (No, this is not a story about mechanically braiding hair.) I believe it began with a rubber scraper in the left hand and a mixer in the right hand, and one too many samplings of the chocolate cake batter while mixing.
When the scraper got a little too close to the beaters, they jumped out and sucked the scraper right into the whirlpool, and the hand in charge got spun right in with it. From the other side of the room, there was little I could do to help. Actually, I was quite mesmerized by the whole chain of events and just stood staring.
I watched as she got the mixer stopped and her hand out of the maelstrom. I don’t usually express any other sentiment than fear, anxiety, or “losing it” when my kids have an accident, but this time I have to admit that my reaction was skewed, but not as much as her hand. When she held it up, there were fingers pointing in every direction and an unnatural backward declination in the middle of it all.
I am sorry to say that I burst out laughing and didn’t stop for quite some time, a blunder for which I have never been forgiven. I should have stuck with losing it. Happily the awry digits all eventually resumed their former positions, except for the index finger which has been pointed at me ever since.
As you can see, when they want to be, mechanical devices are diabolical. The following story is something of a family secret, and I have recounted it only once or twice. I think the seven-year statute of limitation has long since run out, so I can tell it without fear of being hauled off to jail. Only the passage of much time and some distance allow me to tell it now.
You mothers know what kind of schemes you resort to in order to get some work accomplished when you have a baby in tow and his preferred method being towed is on your hip. Entertaining baby becomes a rather desperate occupation sometimes.
Well, this particular baby was spellbound by the water swishing around in the washing machine. (Sort of like television except with the water element added.) So while I filled it, I let him sit on the adjacent mechanical device, the dryer. Mind you, I didn’t walk into the next room, nor was I distracted by the phone or anything else. My two feet were right in front of the dryer the whole time.
I bent down to pick up the next piece of laundry, and when I stood up, baby had vanished! I think it was like that scene in Lord of the Rings when Frodo stares into the water and keeps leaning toward it until he tips into the pool with the grateful dead or whatever they were called.
Well, you guessed it. What I saw of my baby was his two feet periscoped above the wash water, and they were agitating back and forth just like the towels were. At least there were two of something to grab which I quickly did and heaved. A spluttering, drenched, baby was hauled safely away from the depths of the beguiling and voracious washing machine. Luckily, Baby only sustained a few knots on the head and one tiny cut, but on a permanent basis he seems to be none the worse for wash-and-wear.
Nevertheless, this diatribe comes with the following warning:
Given its perversity, never operate mechanical equipment while under the influence of chocolate or while in any quantitative state of mental distraction or loss of mind.
Monday, April 20, 2009
Bertha's best friend
I would be the first to admit that I am not a social butterfly; in fact a grub may be more like it. I go home at night and stay there. But in case you think I don’t have any friends, I’m here to tell you that I have one who calls me at least once every day. Her first name is Warranty (her mother was probably a movie star) and her last name is Department.
There are a host of adjectives that could be used to describe my good friend--—words like loyal, reliable, constant, persistent…
Warranty doesn’t mind a bit if I forget to hold up my end of the friendship or the conversation; she just keeps calling no matter how neglectful I am. In fact, I have hung up on her more times than I can count, but she is never discouraged.
She is a little featherbrained, though. One evening she calls to tell me this is my third and final call before my warranty expires, and the next night she calls me to alert me about my second and last warning. She has got it wrong in both cases. Actually my warranties have all expired some time ago. (There may be more truth in that statement than a first reading will reveal.)
I have never actually gotten far enough into a conversation with Warranty to find out how her product works and how much these things cost. Surely the cost is not more than the car is worth. Maybe one of these days I’ll let her sell me a warranty on the Butterbean pickup truck which is old enough never to have had a warranty in the first place, a fact that I have been careful not to communicate to Warranty at this point. But if I do, when Warranty calls to say that my warranty is about to expire, I can truthfully say “What warranty? I don’t have a warranty; I never had a warranty.”
Perhaps the pickup ought to have one in its lifetime since it apparently would be committing vehicular suicide to omit it—just ask Warranty. A few spare parts could help it grow ancient gracefully. I read online that most warranty plans detail “a lot of covered parts, but most of the parts on the list are not applicable for the cars on the road today.” It sounds like those parts should be suitable for my truck since it is a miracle that it is on the road today and probably uses most of those non-applicable parts. Buying a warranty on a vehicle like that ought to serve one or the other of us right.
In case you or my brothers think I am not kidding about warranting our pickup, I will herewith put all minds at ease. I watched a lady photocopy one of those extended warranty contracts the other day. The document itself was twenty-one pages long, and the collection included three exclusion pages.
I was tempted to read over her shoulder, but she would have had to stand still for an awful long time. Besides I would really rather park the old truck than read twenty-one pages of legalese covering non-applicable parts. But here are a few of the provisions as I imagined them:
1. This warranty not valid unless vehicle is currently warranted by vehicle’s manufacturer.
2. Exclusions include: all parts deemed not to be stationary or unneedful.
3. Warranty does cover: cracked steering wheel; radio antenna providing such is not embedded in vehicle’s windshield; seatbelt anchor bolts; oil-testing tube cap but does not cover loss of such, directional turn signal fluid/windshield wiper fluid, exhaust muffler bearings, and Johnson maniform rods.
4. Warranty will be rendered null and void upon installation of non-proprietary after-market parts including but not limited to additional cup holders, CD storage systems, or facial tissue dispensers.
Excuse me now—the phone is ringing. It’s probably my friend Warranty..
There are a host of adjectives that could be used to describe my good friend--—words like loyal, reliable, constant, persistent…
Warranty doesn’t mind a bit if I forget to hold up my end of the friendship or the conversation; she just keeps calling no matter how neglectful I am. In fact, I have hung up on her more times than I can count, but she is never discouraged.
She is a little featherbrained, though. One evening she calls to tell me this is my third and final call before my warranty expires, and the next night she calls me to alert me about my second and last warning. She has got it wrong in both cases. Actually my warranties have all expired some time ago. (There may be more truth in that statement than a first reading will reveal.)
I have never actually gotten far enough into a conversation with Warranty to find out how her product works and how much these things cost. Surely the cost is not more than the car is worth. Maybe one of these days I’ll let her sell me a warranty on the Butterbean pickup truck which is old enough never to have had a warranty in the first place, a fact that I have been careful not to communicate to Warranty at this point. But if I do, when Warranty calls to say that my warranty is about to expire, I can truthfully say “What warranty? I don’t have a warranty; I never had a warranty.”
Perhaps the pickup ought to have one in its lifetime since it apparently would be committing vehicular suicide to omit it—just ask Warranty. A few spare parts could help it grow ancient gracefully. I read online that most warranty plans detail “a lot of covered parts, but most of the parts on the list are not applicable for the cars on the road today.” It sounds like those parts should be suitable for my truck since it is a miracle that it is on the road today and probably uses most of those non-applicable parts. Buying a warranty on a vehicle like that ought to serve one or the other of us right.
In case you or my brothers think I am not kidding about warranting our pickup, I will herewith put all minds at ease. I watched a lady photocopy one of those extended warranty contracts the other day. The document itself was twenty-one pages long, and the collection included three exclusion pages.
I was tempted to read over her shoulder, but she would have had to stand still for an awful long time. Besides I would really rather park the old truck than read twenty-one pages of legalese covering non-applicable parts. But here are a few of the provisions as I imagined them:
1. This warranty not valid unless vehicle is currently warranted by vehicle’s manufacturer.
2. Exclusions include: all parts deemed not to be stationary or unneedful.
3. Warranty does cover: cracked steering wheel; radio antenna providing such is not embedded in vehicle’s windshield; seatbelt anchor bolts; oil-testing tube cap but does not cover loss of such, directional turn signal fluid/windshield wiper fluid, exhaust muffler bearings, and Johnson maniform rods.
4. Warranty will be rendered null and void upon installation of non-proprietary after-market parts including but not limited to additional cup holders, CD storage systems, or facial tissue dispensers.
Excuse me now—the phone is ringing. It’s probably my friend Warranty..
Easter and eggs, picnics, candy and such
There are several myths associated with the Easter holiday. Interestingly, they all involve the secular aspects of the festivities rather than the religious ones.
One is that a there is a tradition where you pack a lunch and go the park or the woods and have an Easter picnic. Well, okay you can try it; but if it means spreading a tablecloth on the green grass and enjoying the warm sunshine, I don’t remember it ever happening. All of the Easter picnics I have attended were accompanied by wind, rain or snow, and freezing temperatures. Come to think of it, so are most other holidays around here.
I guess the key figure associated with Easter is the Easter bunny/beagle whose primary responsibility is to bring/hide the Easter eggs/candy, however I don’t think that there is much consistency in his methods of operation. He and the tooth fairy are first cousins and both of them were invented by greedy children who were smarter than their parents which isn’t necessarily saying much.
The Easter bonnet must be a holdover from the horse and buggy days, because I don’t think that the bonnet trade is too brisk now no matter which holiday you are shopping for.
I remember that when I was a child, my friends went to dance class where they danced to a song called The Easter Parade. Since I didn’t get to go to dance class and wished I did and didn’t have an Easter bonnet and wished I had, I have since harbored unforgiving feelings toward Easter bonnets and wouldn’t wear one if it were the prevailing social custom to wear them to Wal-Mart. These feelings are a holdover from my early days, which fortunately date only back to the Nash Rambler era.
There is also a myth that Marshmallow Peeps are a variety of Easter candy. I guess people must buy them. I don’t think they eat them though, in fact I don’t think they are edible. In many cases they seem to be holdovers from last year. They are more suitably used for art projects, pets, ball games, packing, trouble toys, science projects, and to make political statements.
Another myth, as far as I am concerned, is the Easter dress. I never remember about the custom of getting a new spring dress until I sit down in church on Easter Sunday and begin to look around. That is probably because it is rarely spring when Easter comes.
Last but not least is the Easter egg. Coloring eggs is an activity where happy children make colorful artistic creations without ever cracking an egg. Myth.
Actually coloring eggs is when grabby-handed mad-scientists stand on chairs around the kitchen island and mix different colors of dye. They don’t remember from one year to the next that all of the colors of dye mixed together result in eggs that are similar to that other proverbial spheroid, the lead balloon. The same holds true for the trendy “natural/organic” dyes.
This is also a time to redecorate the surface of the countertops, as well as various articles of clothing, the chair legs, the front porch and themselves in the same dingy color with time out needed for crying when the eggs roll off the counter in various directions.
Look at it this way: you can boast that you had a gray Easter. What could be more natural than that? Just look at the sky; and I hope I didn’t just lay an egg here.
One is that a there is a tradition where you pack a lunch and go the park or the woods and have an Easter picnic. Well, okay you can try it; but if it means spreading a tablecloth on the green grass and enjoying the warm sunshine, I don’t remember it ever happening. All of the Easter picnics I have attended were accompanied by wind, rain or snow, and freezing temperatures. Come to think of it, so are most other holidays around here.
I guess the key figure associated with Easter is the Easter bunny/beagle whose primary responsibility is to bring/hide the Easter eggs/candy, however I don’t think that there is much consistency in his methods of operation. He and the tooth fairy are first cousins and both of them were invented by greedy children who were smarter than their parents which isn’t necessarily saying much.
The Easter bonnet must be a holdover from the horse and buggy days, because I don’t think that the bonnet trade is too brisk now no matter which holiday you are shopping for.
I remember that when I was a child, my friends went to dance class where they danced to a song called The Easter Parade. Since I didn’t get to go to dance class and wished I did and didn’t have an Easter bonnet and wished I had, I have since harbored unforgiving feelings toward Easter bonnets and wouldn’t wear one if it were the prevailing social custom to wear them to Wal-Mart. These feelings are a holdover from my early days, which fortunately date only back to the Nash Rambler era.
There is also a myth that Marshmallow Peeps are a variety of Easter candy. I guess people must buy them. I don’t think they eat them though, in fact I don’t think they are edible. In many cases they seem to be holdovers from last year. They are more suitably used for art projects, pets, ball games, packing, trouble toys, science projects, and to make political statements.
Another myth, as far as I am concerned, is the Easter dress. I never remember about the custom of getting a new spring dress until I sit down in church on Easter Sunday and begin to look around. That is probably because it is rarely spring when Easter comes.
Last but not least is the Easter egg. Coloring eggs is an activity where happy children make colorful artistic creations without ever cracking an egg. Myth.
Actually coloring eggs is when grabby-handed mad-scientists stand on chairs around the kitchen island and mix different colors of dye. They don’t remember from one year to the next that all of the colors of dye mixed together result in eggs that are similar to that other proverbial spheroid, the lead balloon. The same holds true for the trendy “natural/organic” dyes.
This is also a time to redecorate the surface of the countertops, as well as various articles of clothing, the chair legs, the front porch and themselves in the same dingy color with time out needed for crying when the eggs roll off the counter in various directions.
Look at it this way: you can boast that you had a gray Easter. What could be more natural than that? Just look at the sky; and I hope I didn’t just lay an egg here.
Saturday, April 4, 2009
Understanding Ebay shopping
You can buy anything on Ebay--the great bazaar in the sky, or more precisely in cyberspace which realm equates to heaven in many minds. I guess the operative assumption of online auctions is that someone somewhere will buy something, anything, sight unseen at that; and I am here to prove it since I myself and an Ebay shopper. More about that later.
The need to shop online ensues from the condition of living in a small town in the outback. That is how it begins anyway. Then after that it becomes a quest to see whether you can ever be the last bidder and win an item that many other people want. I usually only win when I am the only one bidding. And I still lose sometimes. I lost a hairdryer hanging rack when I was sure I was the only one in the world who wanted one.
Since the quantity of items for sale on Ebay is roughly comparable to the amount of the national debt, I thought I could help you make some sense of it all by categorizing some of those things for you. I know Ebay has it’s own system—a list of items you can click on, such as electronics, guns, cameras, etc. My list is a bit more to the point of your sensibilities.
First there are the nothing-for-something deals. You can buy a quart jar of Ozark air, a snowball from the Colorado Rockies, and a square inch of real estate in Hawaii. You will be happy to know that you can also buy a insulting email delivered direct to your inbox. I am wondering why anyone would pay for one of those. I always thought they came free. Isn’t that sort of like spending good money for houseflies?
Second, there is the unique/antique (anything old or scarce) market. I saw an 1850s prosthetic leg made of wood and steel for sale the other day. (I didn’t just type in prosthetic leg and up it came. I was looking for my special kind of socks.) Just so you know, you can’t sell any human remains on Ebay. Prosthetics are okay though.
Then thirdly, there is the collector’s exchange. You might find the last penny for your set of consecutive pennies from 1900 to present on Ebay. One seller found a penny on the ground and with his sales earnings was able to buy a VW bus and drive all the way from wherever to the Jay Leno show. Wow!
Next there is a category I have named the holy food group. You might want to watch your potato chips, cereal, and pretzels more carefully. You may have already eaten a trip to Disneyland or something. There is a current Ebay sale of a pretzel shaped like Mary holding Baby Jesus which last time I checked had a high bid of $3,150. Yes, dollars. Incidentally, someone had contacted the seller to see how many salt crystals were baked on the pretzel since that number might be significant of something—I can’t think what.
Then there is the hard-to-find division. It includes some of those things that are useful but uncommon. I am not an electronic geek by any means, but even I can tell when my old phone charger won’t charge my new phone because the little plug-in thing is the wrong size. Buying a new charger is sometimes impossible, as well as expensive. Where is the government electronics recycle agency when I need it? Well Ebay is it, only free-market capitalism created it. For $2.10 I found on Ebay an adapter the size of a half a pencil that made me the proud owner of a phone charger that I can use and which I might otherwise have had to sell on Ebay.
Finally, there is the you-are-about-to-be-had category which is similar to the first one, only in number one, you are about to be had and you know about it. One of the first things I ever bought on Ebay was a used (red flag) overedge hemmer. Well, it’s a sewing machine, and it could belong to the hard-to-find category, except that about-to-be-had takes precedence.
Well, the used overedge hemmer might have hemmed when the seller shipped it, but there was not a chance that it could by the time I got it. As you know, sewing machines are not round like a ball nor soft like a pillow. You would not play catch with one nor sleep on it. They have spindles, hinges, corners and edges, moistly made of metal or hard plastic.
My machine came shipped in an oversized cardboard box into which it and its parts had been dumped with not even a square of bubble wrap or a piece of popcorn or newspaper for padding. What I got was a Swiss cheese box and the proverbial bucket of bolts but only the pieces that were too big to fall through the holes. To add to the pain, the operating instructions were written in Chinese and the pictures were drawn in Swahili.
The need to shop online ensues from the condition of living in a small town in the outback. That is how it begins anyway. Then after that it becomes a quest to see whether you can ever be the last bidder and win an item that many other people want. I usually only win when I am the only one bidding. And I still lose sometimes. I lost a hairdryer hanging rack when I was sure I was the only one in the world who wanted one.
Since the quantity of items for sale on Ebay is roughly comparable to the amount of the national debt, I thought I could help you make some sense of it all by categorizing some of those things for you. I know Ebay has it’s own system—a list of items you can click on, such as electronics, guns, cameras, etc. My list is a bit more to the point of your sensibilities.
First there are the nothing-for-something deals. You can buy a quart jar of Ozark air, a snowball from the Colorado Rockies, and a square inch of real estate in Hawaii. You will be happy to know that you can also buy a insulting email delivered direct to your inbox. I am wondering why anyone would pay for one of those. I always thought they came free. Isn’t that sort of like spending good money for houseflies?
Second, there is the unique/antique (anything old or scarce) market. I saw an 1850s prosthetic leg made of wood and steel for sale the other day. (I didn’t just type in prosthetic leg and up it came. I was looking for my special kind of socks.) Just so you know, you can’t sell any human remains on Ebay. Prosthetics are okay though.
Then thirdly, there is the collector’s exchange. You might find the last penny for your set of consecutive pennies from 1900 to present on Ebay. One seller found a penny on the ground and with his sales earnings was able to buy a VW bus and drive all the way from wherever to the Jay Leno show. Wow!
Next there is a category I have named the holy food group. You might want to watch your potato chips, cereal, and pretzels more carefully. You may have already eaten a trip to Disneyland or something. There is a current Ebay sale of a pretzel shaped like Mary holding Baby Jesus which last time I checked had a high bid of $3,150. Yes, dollars. Incidentally, someone had contacted the seller to see how many salt crystals were baked on the pretzel since that number might be significant of something—I can’t think what.
Then there is the hard-to-find division. It includes some of those things that are useful but uncommon. I am not an electronic geek by any means, but even I can tell when my old phone charger won’t charge my new phone because the little plug-in thing is the wrong size. Buying a new charger is sometimes impossible, as well as expensive. Where is the government electronics recycle agency when I need it? Well Ebay is it, only free-market capitalism created it. For $2.10 I found on Ebay an adapter the size of a half a pencil that made me the proud owner of a phone charger that I can use and which I might otherwise have had to sell on Ebay.
Finally, there is the you-are-about-to-be-had category which is similar to the first one, only in number one, you are about to be had and you know about it. One of the first things I ever bought on Ebay was a used (red flag) overedge hemmer. Well, it’s a sewing machine, and it could belong to the hard-to-find category, except that about-to-be-had takes precedence.
Well, the used overedge hemmer might have hemmed when the seller shipped it, but there was not a chance that it could by the time I got it. As you know, sewing machines are not round like a ball nor soft like a pillow. You would not play catch with one nor sleep on it. They have spindles, hinges, corners and edges, moistly made of metal or hard plastic.
My machine came shipped in an oversized cardboard box into which it and its parts had been dumped with not even a square of bubble wrap or a piece of popcorn or newspaper for padding. What I got was a Swiss cheese box and the proverbial bucket of bolts but only the pieces that were too big to fall through the holes. To add to the pain, the operating instructions were written in Chinese and the pictures were drawn in Swahili.
To sit and not faint
There is one thing I have never been able to understand. How is it that children can be sitting quietly on a chair when it seems that suddenly a gravitational anomaly grabs them and they are suddenly on the floor? Whump! One second they are on a chair, and the next they are on the floor in a heap?
I am not talking about kids who only have one cheek on the chair to begin with; nor am I talking about kids on unstable or broken chairs. I do not refer to kids on rolling office chairs----just ordinary four-legged chairs. I am not even talking about kids who have that leaning-back-on-the-chair syndrome which is otherwise known as deacon’s disease.
The fallen children think they are the victims of some sort of trickery, be it gravity, rubber chair legs or whatever, as well. They usually howl like they have been pushed from their chairs. I have seen at least one of them get up and kick the chair. I have also seen them look around for some supposed human culprit.
I am sorry, but I have been known to laugh right out loud and hard when it happens. The “fallen” get up and want to punish me if not the chair.
I don’t get how you fall off a chair. Do you momentarily fall asleep? Do you temporarily forget how to hold yourself upright?
Sometimes when my children who are now mothers and fathers complain about their kids falling off chairs, I explain to them about genetics and how they did it too. However, I never remember falling off a chair myself and neither does Mr. B., so either it is a case of spontaneous gene alteration or they are going to have to blame the other side of their families. But since all of those kids had at least one parent who was unsteady on their seat, they are going to have a hard time getting away with it. But if they are raising a generation of chair-floppers, they are not blaming me for that one.
I was listing toward the gene-alteration theory until just the other day when I witnessed one of my kids’ in-laws do the unthinkable. That’s right! The person in question fell off the bench!
I don’t think this person went to sleep; we were at a sporting event watching our mutual grandkids who seem to run better than they sit. Forgetting how to sit upright would be a little more plausible. My generation is at the age where we forget all kinds of things. Or perhaps the distraction index was a little too high.
So, again, I don’t quite get it, but the kids in that family haven’t got a chance because they have inherited chair-flopping from more than one source.
Before you start counting up my kids and deciding who their in-laws are, I will make it easy for you. The person who lost her seating is a teacher who says her kindergartners fall off their chairs all the time.
Someone probably needs to get a research grant and spend some time and money studying the affliction of spontaneous unseating. Sooner or later someone is going to get hurt.
I am not talking about kids who only have one cheek on the chair to begin with; nor am I talking about kids on unstable or broken chairs. I do not refer to kids on rolling office chairs----just ordinary four-legged chairs. I am not even talking about kids who have that leaning-back-on-the-chair syndrome which is otherwise known as deacon’s disease.
The fallen children think they are the victims of some sort of trickery, be it gravity, rubber chair legs or whatever, as well. They usually howl like they have been pushed from their chairs. I have seen at least one of them get up and kick the chair. I have also seen them look around for some supposed human culprit.
I am sorry, but I have been known to laugh right out loud and hard when it happens. The “fallen” get up and want to punish me if not the chair.
I don’t get how you fall off a chair. Do you momentarily fall asleep? Do you temporarily forget how to hold yourself upright?
Sometimes when my children who are now mothers and fathers complain about their kids falling off chairs, I explain to them about genetics and how they did it too. However, I never remember falling off a chair myself and neither does Mr. B., so either it is a case of spontaneous gene alteration or they are going to have to blame the other side of their families. But since all of those kids had at least one parent who was unsteady on their seat, they are going to have a hard time getting away with it. But if they are raising a generation of chair-floppers, they are not blaming me for that one.
I was listing toward the gene-alteration theory until just the other day when I witnessed one of my kids’ in-laws do the unthinkable. That’s right! The person in question fell off the bench!
I don’t think this person went to sleep; we were at a sporting event watching our mutual grandkids who seem to run better than they sit. Forgetting how to sit upright would be a little more plausible. My generation is at the age where we forget all kinds of things. Or perhaps the distraction index was a little too high.
So, again, I don’t quite get it, but the kids in that family haven’t got a chance because they have inherited chair-flopping from more than one source.
Before you start counting up my kids and deciding who their in-laws are, I will make it easy for you. The person who lost her seating is a teacher who says her kindergartners fall off their chairs all the time.
Someone probably needs to get a research grant and spend some time and money studying the affliction of spontaneous unseating. Sooner or later someone is going to get hurt.
The madness that is March
March seems to be the month for all kinds of craziness. For instance, look at what Congress is doing. And then there is the NCAA and what it is doing.
To tell the truth, March Madness is a phenomenon that I totally understand and am involved in, at least from a local, as in Utah, perspective. I am as mad as the rest of them. But, you can only blame part of mankind’s erratic early spring behavior on basketball. The March-hare metaphor was in use long before the game of basketball was invented.
Some of the madness of March is due to anxiety over the fact that tax time is just around the corner; and if you put off filing until basketball is over, it will be too late. Then there is the return to daylight savings time which makes everyone all the more cranky, The other factor contributing to the madness is that we are only barely coming out on the other end of a long winter, which, by the way, would be intolerable without basketball.
The most popular winter sports, I once read, are ice skating, skiing, and jumping up and yelling, "That was a foul, you idiot." I participate in only one of them.
Well, I used to actually play basketball, and I raised four boys and three girls who all played basketball at one level or another, from church ball to high school state championship. It was bound to happen. Between cold weather and basketball exposure (pun), it was a given that I would sit in front of the TV under a comforter and watch the games.
Just in case you are interested, basketball is the only non-contact sport where the injured list is longer than the bench. Broken noses, permanent shin splints, sprained ankles, and bruised egos are among the injuries we have worked through or lived with in our family.
A backyard or a basketball court full of snow didn’t stop them from “practicing” their sports. My kids have tried to set up an indoor version of every ball game invented. They have erected goal posts using wrapping paper rolls, tape and string. They have set up basketball hoops under the open stairs—both fixed and breakaway kinds. They have strung volleyball nets from the bunk beds, and they have mounted the water balloon launcher on the handrail. They should have been so imaginative with math or English or anything cerebral.
They always started out playing a mild version of every game. Nerf balls or rolled-up socks were- allowable, barely, but escalation of the game was as natural as playing it. The football passes started out as mere pitches but soon turned into long bombs. The fingertip sets soon became vicious spikes. The slam dunks got harder and the basket got higher.
I invariably became one of those “idiots” who can’t see fouls, and I always had to throw everyone out of the game or at least bench them until the end of March. They always tried to get me to reverse my calls too.
So back to the current March--I may have to go into coaching now that I don’t have to referee so much anymore. I have paid enough attention to know that the top talking point in any discussion about the Jazz is whether they can win on the road. Every coach and sports commentator has posed the question. Some of them have answers. Most of them just talk around in a circle and come right back to square one (I’m practicing being a sports commentator, too):
Q: Are the Jazz going to find a way to win on the road?
Well, I have thought it over at some length myself, and I have it…
A: In order to make on-the-road feel like home, they need to bring their own basketballs, their own ball boys, their own sweat towels, and their own “idiots.”
To tell the truth, March Madness is a phenomenon that I totally understand and am involved in, at least from a local, as in Utah, perspective. I am as mad as the rest of them. But, you can only blame part of mankind’s erratic early spring behavior on basketball. The March-hare metaphor was in use long before the game of basketball was invented.
Some of the madness of March is due to anxiety over the fact that tax time is just around the corner; and if you put off filing until basketball is over, it will be too late. Then there is the return to daylight savings time which makes everyone all the more cranky, The other factor contributing to the madness is that we are only barely coming out on the other end of a long winter, which, by the way, would be intolerable without basketball.
The most popular winter sports, I once read, are ice skating, skiing, and jumping up and yelling, "That was a foul, you idiot." I participate in only one of them.
Well, I used to actually play basketball, and I raised four boys and three girls who all played basketball at one level or another, from church ball to high school state championship. It was bound to happen. Between cold weather and basketball exposure (pun), it was a given that I would sit in front of the TV under a comforter and watch the games.
Just in case you are interested, basketball is the only non-contact sport where the injured list is longer than the bench. Broken noses, permanent shin splints, sprained ankles, and bruised egos are among the injuries we have worked through or lived with in our family.
A backyard or a basketball court full of snow didn’t stop them from “practicing” their sports. My kids have tried to set up an indoor version of every ball game invented. They have erected goal posts using wrapping paper rolls, tape and string. They have set up basketball hoops under the open stairs—both fixed and breakaway kinds. They have strung volleyball nets from the bunk beds, and they have mounted the water balloon launcher on the handrail. They should have been so imaginative with math or English or anything cerebral.
They always started out playing a mild version of every game. Nerf balls or rolled-up socks were- allowable, barely, but escalation of the game was as natural as playing it. The football passes started out as mere pitches but soon turned into long bombs. The fingertip sets soon became vicious spikes. The slam dunks got harder and the basket got higher.
I invariably became one of those “idiots” who can’t see fouls, and I always had to throw everyone out of the game or at least bench them until the end of March. They always tried to get me to reverse my calls too.
So back to the current March--I may have to go into coaching now that I don’t have to referee so much anymore. I have paid enough attention to know that the top talking point in any discussion about the Jazz is whether they can win on the road. Every coach and sports commentator has posed the question. Some of them have answers. Most of them just talk around in a circle and come right back to square one (I’m practicing being a sports commentator, too):
Q: Are the Jazz going to find a way to win on the road?
Well, I have thought it over at some length myself, and I have it…
A: In order to make on-the-road feel like home, they need to bring their own basketballs, their own ball boys, their own sweat towels, and their own “idiots.”
Just a lilttle scam
My mother called me the other day to tell me that she had a letter from someone who wanted to send her $500. She had the notice. She had already won. She didn’t have to pay taxes on her winnings, and all she had to do was to fill out her acceptance form and send it somewhere overseas.
“You know,” she said, “I kind of worry when I have to send it overseas.”
Ding, ding, ding, ding! (Alarms going off in my head.) If any of you don’t know how old I am, you haven’t been paying attention. If you have, stop here and figure out how old my mother is. If you think “preying on the elderly” might apply here, you must have passed fifth grade math; and you are right.
I begin yelling at my mother over the phone. “Don’t send anyone anything. Where overseas? Was is Brisbane or Nigeria?”
“Well, let me see now, where was it? Oh yes, somewhere in Australia.” (Oh, my gosh! I frantically begin to go over my options. Whew, it’s after five o’clock; she can’t mail it today. I still have time to get hold of that letter before it disappears somewhere into the clutches of the United States Postal Service, which never loses scammer correspondence, only important social announcements and mortgage payments.)
“Did they tell you that they need some money so they can recover their family’s rightful throne and fortune?”
“No, they just said I won the prize.”
“Did they tell you you’ve won the lottery but they need to know where to deposit the money?”
“Well, no, I just have to say I want the money.” (Do birds fly?)
“Did they ask for your bank account number?”
“No, they just asked me to fill in my name and address.”
“They already have that,” I remind her through clenched teeth. “Did they ask you for your social security number?” (They probably already have that too.)
“No, I can’t remember it anyway.”
“Did they say they need some money so they can fly to Switzerland to unfreeze their assets?”
“No.”
“Well, you just hang onto that correspondence until I can look at it. It’s probably a scam.”
“A what?”
“You know, someone is trying to cheat you out of your money.”
“Oh, they wouldn’t do that.”
Next day I “drop in” to check on “the mail.”
“Okay, let me see that letter about the money you won.”
“Well, I am too going to send that in. It says I have already won $5,000, and it’s tax free.” (Do pigs fly?)
“Five thousand! You said five hundred.”
“I knew it was five-something. (Close.) Anyway, they probably want to reward me. Why, I’m their best customer."
“What?”
“I have been taking the Reader’s Digest ever since I can remember, and what’s more I read it. And my mother before me took it all her life, and Dad and I got it for all you kids for all these years. Who deserves their prize money more than I do?”
Good question. I guess Reader’s Digest is outsourcing these days.
I’ll let you know.
“You know,” she said, “I kind of worry when I have to send it overseas.”
Ding, ding, ding, ding! (Alarms going off in my head.) If any of you don’t know how old I am, you haven’t been paying attention. If you have, stop here and figure out how old my mother is. If you think “preying on the elderly” might apply here, you must have passed fifth grade math; and you are right.
I begin yelling at my mother over the phone. “Don’t send anyone anything. Where overseas? Was is Brisbane or Nigeria?”
“Well, let me see now, where was it? Oh yes, somewhere in Australia.” (Oh, my gosh! I frantically begin to go over my options. Whew, it’s after five o’clock; she can’t mail it today. I still have time to get hold of that letter before it disappears somewhere into the clutches of the United States Postal Service, which never loses scammer correspondence, only important social announcements and mortgage payments.)
“Did they tell you that they need some money so they can recover their family’s rightful throne and fortune?”
“No, they just said I won the prize.”
“Did they tell you you’ve won the lottery but they need to know where to deposit the money?”
“Well, no, I just have to say I want the money.” (Do birds fly?)
“Did they ask for your bank account number?”
“No, they just asked me to fill in my name and address.”
“They already have that,” I remind her through clenched teeth. “Did they ask you for your social security number?” (They probably already have that too.)
“No, I can’t remember it anyway.”
“Did they say they need some money so they can fly to Switzerland to unfreeze their assets?”
“No.”
“Well, you just hang onto that correspondence until I can look at it. It’s probably a scam.”
“A what?”
“You know, someone is trying to cheat you out of your money.”
“Oh, they wouldn’t do that.”
Next day I “drop in” to check on “the mail.”
“Okay, let me see that letter about the money you won.”
“Well, I am too going to send that in. It says I have already won $5,000, and it’s tax free.” (Do pigs fly?)
“Five thousand! You said five hundred.”
“I knew it was five-something. (Close.) Anyway, they probably want to reward me. Why, I’m their best customer."
“What?”
“I have been taking the Reader’s Digest ever since I can remember, and what’s more I read it. And my mother before me took it all her life, and Dad and I got it for all you kids for all these years. Who deserves their prize money more than I do?”
Good question. I guess Reader’s Digest is outsourcing these days.
I’ll let you know.
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