May 31, 2011
May 30, 2011
Yokohama-Mama-Xpress
Some mornings overwhelm me, I will make no bones about it. Often life can deal me a hand that I simply do not want to play, but I take a turn anyway. Early morning is a special time of the day, but it can also be empty and meaningless, much too often this applies in my life.
Take mowing for example, there are days that I just do not feel like mowing, but you have to do it, it is required of you, the grass grows, you are dedicated to keeping it looking good. This is one of your jobs in life, a chore that you have to do from time to time, and there is no escape.
But from time to time, life offers up a mystery or a time of joy, and I guess in the end, that what makes it all worth it? Saturday was like that.
My wife is Chinese, her name is Yoko, she is an indoor person, basically “a stay inside type of girl.” Her Mama is Chinese, her daddy was Japanese, she has a third cousin who is Korean, but they do not talk about him much. This is why she has a Japanese surname. She is a great girl and we have been together for a long time. She doesn’t like the great outdoors, she isn’t into National Parks and the serenity and beauty of nature. She is basically a kitchen table, I am just fine, go away and leave me alone kind of girl.
So I was a little taken aback this past weekend, when she walked out of the front door of the house in a long sleeve shirt, ball-cap, and gloves in her hands. She looked at me and announced rather unceremoniously … “I am going to mow the yard!”
This was a new one for me, let me tell you.
She has never, I repeat NEVER even remotely offered to mow the yard or ride the lawn tractor for that matter in all the time we have lived here. So I thought to myself, “this I got to see.” So I went to the barn, fetched the trusty lawn tractor and gave her a quick lesson on how things work. She confidently climbs on board and takes off. No more telephone calls ladies and gentlemen, we have a winner! (or at least at the time I thought so)
The woman is mowing, I cannot believe it. I in turn pickup the gasoline powered weed-eater and head down the fence line. She takes off in one direction and I go the opposite way. Having learned a long time ago, “a wise man never wakes his second sleeping baby just to see it smile” I know it is best to leave her to her amusements. Everything goes well, that is for awhile, and then I notice something strange.
I stop what I am doing and I intently listen to the sound of the tractor.
In the distance, over in the far corner of the property, I notice that the lawn tractor is running just swell, but the mowing blades are not engaged. She is riding around, but she is not mowing. This has happened because she has somewhere, stopped, backed up and then went on about her business. When you back the lawn tractor up, it automatically will disengage the blades (safety measure) and this has happened.
My wife the indoor lady on the other hand, is blissfully unaware of this fact of lawn mowing safety and is just whizzing around the yard, making lazy little circles under a crystal clear blue Oklahoma sky. Bumping along, the Purple Martins close by to retrieve any stray bug she might stir up. She rides by and smiles, I cannot believe what I am seeing. I see my wife making laps in the yard, nothing is getting mowed as the blades are not turning, she is just making laps. This amuses me for a short while, no it really does, I find some humor in it, but then the reality of $3.78 per gallon gasoline comes home to me and I realize this has to stop.
So I flag her down and I say to her, “Honey, how is it going?” and she smiles a big smile.
Handing her a small ice cold bottle of water (this was my alleged excuse to stop her) I ask her, “do you notice anything different in the cut? Is the tractor running a little different to you, notice the sound of it?” and she says, “Well, yes, yes I do. How come?” So as tactfully as I can, I say to her, “You might want to try this?” I reach down and pull out the PTO (power take off) knob and the blades kick in and the tractor goes back into “mowing” mode.
She gets this strange look on her face, says to me, “I was wondering why when I looked back, it didn’t look like I had mowed a thing!”
There is an old saying …. “Life is … everything that happens when you are not paying attention.” After an ocean of time, she still has the ability to make me smile, and in the end, in the final count, that is all that really matters.
But really … I don’t know … “At four bucks a gallon, maybe it is best, she just stay inside” you know what I mean?
OOO
May 29, 2011
Memorial Day
If you do not read anything this day … but have the chance … Please Read This.
Cracker Boy Memorial Day
OOO
Comments Off
May 27, 2011
Live Free Or Die Hard
Not much on television, so I am watching “Die Hard” with Bruce Willis, an old stand-by on a somewhat hum-drum Oklahoma Day and there is the scene where the cop is purchasing all of these Twinkies for “his pregnant wife” and he walks outside and stares up at the NakaTomiBuilding.
The sign on the immediate right reads, “Unleaded Regular 74.9 per gallon” ah, the good old days, eh?
Die Hard is a good movie, but I liked the one after that, “Return of the Titans” or something like that. Denzel Washington, a man’s movie, football, the sixties. Bag of Cheeto;s, diet soda, I am legally dead for the next two and one-half hours .. hire out an undocumented worker to take out the trash and leave me alone.
Boom Shaka-laka, Boom Shaka-laka, we are the Titans! The mighty, mighty Titans!
A good movie. Winners. Upbeat stuff. Most of us have never experienced the feeling of being on a “winning team” in life. For the most parts, that is a special time only reserved for a select few. I had a taste of it when I was in Boot Camp, I was in the First Color Company of the year, and we were good. No, we were “better than good” we were “the” best. Being on a winning team is truly a special feeling, it is a wonderful sensation, almost indescribable to a point, kind of like flying to Paris for breakfast on a LearJet, that would be close to it.
As I said … We were top drawer. We were for the most parts the best. We were unbeatable.
No one could hold a candle to us, we had every flag you could possibly have … And we had TWO OF THEM EACH. We were the Super Bowl of companies in 1965. That is possibly my only claim to fame. So I know what it feels like to be a winner, I have been there, done that, got the T-shirt. I can truthfully say … It sure feels good to be a winner.
Taking all this one step further, this possibly could be the reason I have a problem with all this Global Warming and Energy non-sense going around. All this whining about our economy and how things are not getting better. This idea of it not being real or the fact that we are somewhat powerless to do anything about it.
Most any person would quickly agree, that is not a winner’s attitude.
Why is it we cannot deliver a bottle of water to some poor soul standing on the roof of his flooded house in time of emergency or rebuild a city that was knocked down to its proverbial knees by an act of nature. When did we seemingly overnight become a nation of whiners and complainers, incapable of solving even the simplest of problems for our country and our citizens?
Not long ago I watched in awe as the Japanese people lined up for the basic necessities in life, politely, quietly, with composure and respect. We could learn a lot from the Japanese people about courtesy, patience and dignity.
When did we become this “I cannot do it state” or this “can’t do society?”
There was a time in this country, that we could face any challenge put before us with strength, national resolve, and we would rise to any challenge presented to us. When you look back, we have solved some pretty hefty problems domestically; we have taken more than one tyrant to task, and kicked some tail. We put men on the moon, we have sent instruments of exploration into deep space, we have overcome great diversity in racism and civil rights violations.
There is only one thing permanent in America any more and that is change.
We had best change and do it soon, or it is the final chapter in our history. You want to put up a wind turbine in my backyard? If that is what it takes, then I am onboard. Same with refineries or solar collecting grids, screw the view, I want to be cool when it is hot outside, if that is what it takes, bring it on.
Boom Shaka-laka,Boom Shaka-laka, we are the Titans! The mighty, mighty Titans!
Nice thought, but in today’s society, not very realistic. It is time to suit up for another game America … To get back on the winning side of life. THOUGHT FOR THE DAY: “No one has ever gotten laid by wearing pins on their lapel with funny sayings. No one ever got very far following a parked car Mr. Obama.” Some of us are getting tired of taking it in the shorts, week after week, where is the change that was promised.
Have a great Memorial Day weekend, take time to remember all the brave men who died so that you might enjoy the freedoms that you have today.
OOO
Comments Off
May 25, 2011
Alam’s Road Trip
Kind of tired the other night, but I wanted to see the end of the NASCAR race, so I set the VCR to record the rest of the race and I went to bed. I am after all, in my golden years, and I do need my rest, the race was no big thing. Let technology take care of it, it is touted to “improve our lives and make life much better for the majority of us” so often to dreamland I went. Next day, I bring it up and start to watch it, everything goes swimmingly until the last ten laps, they break for a commercial and that is that.
No more race, no last ten laps, and I am here to testify … Technology sucks.
Tristin Saghn little sister who is two years old (he is 9) fell into the family pool in Mesa, Arizona this week. After she was pulled from he water, Tristin started to perform chest compressions and mouth-to-mouth on the little girl while his mother rushed into the house and called 911 for help. Tristin who said that he learned the lifesaving technique while watching television, said that “he knew what it was that he was doing it right.” Evidently so, little sister started breathing again, and doctors says that she is going to be just fine due to the smart reaction of her big brother.
“She is really beautiful, and I love her very much.” Tristin said.
Yesterday we had an outbreak of tornado’s here in the heartland and this morning a lot of folks waking up here in Central Oklahoma to just about nothing. One of the things that I did before the approaching storm was to check the safe room in the garage (steel enclosure bolted to the floor with 21 – 18” bolts into the concrete) for snakes. We have found snakes in there, they kind of gravitate to the coolness and darkness of the room. No snakes incidentally, but finding one during a tornado, would not be the optimum safety plan it seems to me.
A lady in Florida might be considering removing the pet door on her house, it allowed a small alligator access to her home this week. She walked into the back bedroom of her house and there the alligator was. Might be time to get rid of the swinging door in the kitchen and start letting Fluffy in and out the old fashioned way.
Japan is now creating suicide hot lines and sending mental-health counselors into the regions affected by the tsunami and nuclear crisis out of fear there will be a surge of self-inflicted deaths in that country. The Japanese, whose culture romanticizes suicide, already have a suicide rate more than double that of the United States and it is the leading cause of death there among men ages 20 to 44 and women ages 15 to 34.
Now I understand that if you call the Suicide hot line in Pakistan and tell them you are depressed and you can drive a truck, they get all excited.
Yesterday I overheard some guy complaining during lunch that a beer in the Dallas Stadium in Texas costs $12.50. Who in their right mind would pay $12.50 for a beer, I don’t care how cold it is, that is just too much. American’s are spending something like $1.2 trillion dollars on nonessential goods and services annually, according to the Commerce Department. See, we do have government agency that you can actually benefit from, we are paying a LOT of people to keep numbers on what it is that we are buying, your tax dollars at work.
Consumer spending on discretionary luxury items, including jewelry, yachts, sports cars, alcoholic beverages, and candy, has risen to 11.2% of total consumer spending, even in hard times, that is up from 4% in 1959. Which is kind of stupid, because 1959 was what, 52 years ago?
Give me a break.
Our consumer spending here at our house constitutes mainly of groceries and gasoline. 55% of American drivers say they are changing their driving habits as a result of high gas prices. Except maybe Kyle Busch, he was recently stopped in North Carolina for driving 128 miles per hour on a public highway.
Everyone has a dream.
A tomorrow.
A Someday … New York City cabdriver Mohammed Alam got the fare of a lifetime: $5,0000 to drive two New Jersey residents from New York to Los Angeles. The six-day journey was one man’s idea or spur of the moment urge for a birthday adventure.
Alam for his part, was able to live his childhood dream of seeing Universal Studios. Nothing is impossible in this world,” said Alam. “We can do everything, whatever we want” and it is quite possible the cabbie might have enjoyed the trip even more than the fare paying passengers.
Make a wish … Now blow out all the candles on your cake!
(Next stop Dollywood)
OOO
Comments Off
May 23, 2011
Didn’t Happen File
As I am a firm believer that people come to this page to be uplifted, informed, amused and even to some respects, entertained. I feel it would be doing those faithful readers of this page, a disservice to keep ranting about “my issues with the oil companies” and I am going to put up something positive. The world did not end as predicted and I am therefore obligated to write something this morning.
I feel kind of confused about the entire thing (ambivalent?), there are days I want to end it all, I surely do, and then there are days, I really want some more of it. Part of the human condition I suppose. We all search out the good deal in life, the thing that rows our boat, that keeps us afloat during hard times and good times alike. Something like Sam Kuver had.
Sam lived right across the street from the highschool, nice little house and spacious yard. The school wanted Sam’s place, they wanted it bad. The school board approached him with an offer, they said, “Sam, we want to buy your place and we want it for a school bus garage. Will you sell it to us?” Sam then replied, “Where is it that I will live, if you take my place for a garage for your buses?”
They did not have an answer.
Then one of them said, “Okay, sell it to us now, and you can live here rent free until you die, and we will pay your utilities and your taxes all the time you are living here. We don’t want to miss out on this property.” So Sam considered the idea and then said, “You have a deal.” He was 66 years old at the time. A friend of mine called this weekend and told me that Sam had passed on and informed me of when the funeral would be. By the way, “he was 92 years old when he died.” I suppose in the near future there will be a new bus barn going up just across the street from the high school.
Not a cheap one by any means for the school board, but it sure was a good bargain for old Sam.
Eight years ago, the 1,500 residents of the Kenyan village of Lwala sold chicken and cattle to raise $900 in airfare so that one their boys, Milton Ochieng, could enter Dartmouth College. Today Milton is a graduate of Vanderbilt University Medical School and, along with his brother Fred, who followed him to both alma maters, he has repaid the favor by building a clinic in his home village.
People helping people, something you don’t seem to hear about much these days.
The brothers raised $150,000 for the clinic, which in its first year has seen 20,000 patients, most of them for free. “It makes you feel great to be a doctor,” said Milton. An amazing feat when you stop to consider that this all occurred in a third world country, not some Mega Super Power.
Fifty four years ago, Jan Zacharda lost her Ludington, Michigan, high school ring in the depths of Lake Micigan. Last month she got a call from Robert Savage, who had found it with a metal detector. Savage had actually discovered the ring some 12 years ago, but couldn’t locate its owner; though Zacharda’s class year, 1955, was clearly stamped on the ring.
Along with the initials “J.P.” for Jan Pedersen her maiden name.
But Savage recently got hold of the Ludington yearbook for the class of ’55 and found only one name with the right initials. He then began calling all the are Pedersen’s until he found one who knew Jan. Kind of nice to know that there are still some honest people out there.
Not so smart file: A sense of privilege, after a first-class passenger on a Delta Airline flight from New York became so angry that economy passengers were let off the plane ahead of him, that he opened an emergency hatch and slid down the chute! The indignant passenger was promptly arrested.
The absolute best one that has come to my attention this week is the California woman who whipped out her .44 caliber Magnum and began firing at mice scurrying across the floor of her trailer. A .44 Magnum, man, talk about “overkill” that is kind of unreal right there.
But wait … It gets better.
She drops the gun (more than likely reaching for another beer) and it fires a bullet that pieces her knee, bounces off a friends keychain, and grazes his groin before coming to rest in his coin pocket. And people wonder what type of person lives in a Mobile home?
But wait, it gets even worse. A diabetic Illinois woman is recovering after he dog chewed off her big toe! (I am not making this up). The 56 year old woman who suffers with numbness in her lower extremities says she dozed off in the afternoon (not an uncommon occurrence with diabetics) and her 1 year old miniature dachshund, Roscoe, (again I am not making this up), snuggled at her feet, starts gnawing on her foot.
When she awoke from the nap, and looked down, and saw Roscoe dining at the big toe buffet, she screamed! At that time, her daughter ran into the room and discovered the dog munching away. I believe her exact quote was: “I didn’t think when I went in there I was going to see that.. It is hard to take in when you walk into a room and there’s a dog eating your Mom.”
Duh — You think so?
It has been a somewhat interesting week, in some cases I am sure a few people “wished the world would have ended as scheduled” and I suppose on the other hand, a few were not surprised at all, that it did not. Me? I am okay with it all, I have misplaced my work boots and do not have a clue as to where they might be located, but that is Monday for you.
It is always kind of hectic on Monday around here, so I kind of expect it. That is what makes the world go round.
OOO
May 20, 2011
Tilting At Windmills
It seems as if “everything” shuts down during a thunderstorm. What is the use of having all of this technology at your fingertips, if you cannot use it during certain times of the day or the week. Tried to check my email this morning and it is not allowed, storms in the area, so therefore, information will not be distributed. Same thing with the Dish, 200 channels, but you are relegated to sitting there watching it “search for an available transponder.” Technology sucks.
Yesterday’s mail brought me an answer from Shell Oil Co. on my credit card snafu. No good news to report there, and as I suspected in the beginning, “they do not care about me nor do they care about my problems. Recently I wrote them about it and I published it here.
Yesterday the mail carrier brought me my official-unofficial-kiss off reply.
The official response was “they did not understand the nature of my problem.” To be specific it read: “Dear Mr. Smith Thank you for your recent inquiry regarding your Shell account. We are unclear on how we may assist you. Please call us at 1-800-331 Blah-blah Yada-Yada.” And that was it, nothing more, and I suppose, nothing forthcoming.
I mean if you cannot read, what good is a telephone call going to do?
Must be nice, to have a job, where you sit around all day and just blow people off. No real responsibilities, most likely do not have to come in early or dress for success. Just send off a form letter that basically says … Go Away. I could sit down at the keyboard and fire off another missive, being very explicit (which I thought the first one was to begin with) and make it quite clear “what the nature of my problem was.” But what is the use, they would just ignore me again. I am trashing their card, and going back to cash sales. Most likely I will discontinue doing business with them altogether.
Another thing I find interesting about all this, the letter was signed “S. Larson.” I have seen this name before, when I made inquiries on a VISA card for instance. You don’t suppose that all letters are naturally forwarded to this “S. Lawson” to answer do you? That would be something. I sincerely hope that when I die, I don’t get up to the Pearly Gates, walk up to a desk with an Angel sitting there and the name tag on the desk reads “S. Larson.”
If this is the case, I am going to be in some serious trouble, let me tell you.
Maybe I caught them on an “off day” or something. Maybe they perhaps thought they were awake, but an important and overused part of their brain was asleep when the letter arrived there at the “credit card center.” You know if you deprive rats of rest, this causes their neurons to start shutting down at random intervals.
The rats in turn, appear to be wide awake, but if you hook up little tiny electrodes to their brains this will show that the neurons responsible for eye-hand coordination are currently turned off, making it harder for them to rip sugar cubes and of course, answer letters from consumers.
Wait a minute, rats don’t have hands. What could I possible be thinking here.
Thirty-five percent of Americans don’t get enough rest each night according to the CDC (Center For Disease Control and Prevention). Maybe they are as my grandson is fond of saying …. “Zoned out?”
Gasoline is now on the way down, currently .16 cents below the national average here. Wife came in yesterday and said, “Gas has gone down Honey!” as if she had some big earth shaking news, when it gets back down to say something reasonable like a buck fifty a gallon tell me about it. At three fifty-plus per gallon, that just doesn’t seem to row my boat, I am sorry. It sure doesn’t help having a lousy credit card from Shell Oil with a $400 limit on it either.
But they don’t understand my problem.
What they cannot tell you is why they put a $400 limit on your credit card and then turned of the pump at $376, declined the sale, and embarrassed you at the pump. But when you have the only game in town, I guess you can do just about anything you want, that is, if your name is S. Larson.
Have a good weekend.
OOO
May 18, 2011
Incoming! Exploding Desert.
Just when you think you have seen and read it all, something new comes along to shake up that theory. Yesterday I got an email about exploding watermelons in China. Some bozo decides to induce growth, so he puts it or injects it (I am not really sure) into his melons. They in turn start growing. Evidently at a “explosive rate” and actually do explode. A couple of years ago, we ran an article about kids and potato cannons on the southside of town, but this one, well, this one is something new.
Chines consumers here lately have been frightened by new revelations of tainted food. Just this year alone inspectors have found “salted duck eggs containing cancer-causing dyes, artificial honey, fake wine, donkey-hide gelatin, waste oil, sulfur steamed ginseng, plaster tofu, dyed bread” and other tainted food products. I don’t think that even Paula Deen from the food channel would be able to make any of the above editable or attractive for that matter.
I was thinking about Chinese Food for lunch today, but after reading this, I may have to re-think my position on that one.
The American economy continues to slide downward and things are not looking up. One thing that really hacks me off is this practice of all the “wise men” in Congress who are blaming the voters for the fiscal crisis. Recently they have taken it upon themselves to claim that selfish shortsighted voters have caused the U.S. budget deficit and economic meltdown by clamoring for goodies they couldn’t pay for. When the simple truth is that our current woes were caused by foolish policies promoted by the policy elite, not ordinary voters.
It is still the economy, stupid.
Here is something else, I don’t understand. This new business practice of asking what you are going to do with something when you go to purchase it? I mean, “Why do I have to tell some salesperson what it is that I am going to do with the product, when you are purchasing it for your own use?” You go in, you politely ask, “Do you have a 3/8” giggy-gabber?” and the clerk looks at you and says, “What are you putting it on?”
Like it is his some of his business or something. Just give me what I ask for, and forget the third degree.
Almost half of all the adults in Detroit (something like 47%) are now considered functionally illiterate, a new study released this week says. Now this brings up an interesting dilemma, if you live there and you have car trouble for instance, who is going to fix it for you? What about medical issues, technical items in your home, who repairs these? And the other thing I find disturbing about this, is the study went on to say that only 40% of the people interviewed and are unable to read, have made attempts to learn how.
In a small way, I find some comfort in all of this. I have said for years, “there is no incentive in this country to learn to read and write English, as we coddle to every race of people who come to this country, by printing up everything in their language and not ours.” Take California for instance, they print the ballot up in 13 languages besides English. Now we have all these people who cannot read nor write.
It appears that our chickens have come home to roost.
Found out this week that John Travolta does his shopping at WalMart and is a regular customer there. Arnold “the gover-nator” has a love child and told the house maid, “I will be back.” Maria moved out, that is a new one, it is usually the guy who moves out. And a Florida woman was bombarded with telephone calls after a another woman with a similar name won $2 million on the lottery in that state. Reach out, reach out and bug somebody!
Now that would be a new one, someone calling you and begging you for money, simply because you have some.
Remember the good old days when you stood around and listened to all of this Yackty-Yack on the cellphones. It was everywhere, in the lines at the bank, the post office, in the dark spaces of the movie theaters. People talking on cellphones, sharing every rancid lurid detail of their feckless lives in public. Now that has been replaced, it is the din of texting, the talking has been replaced by the clicking sound, people pecking away at their little tiny back-lit screens text messaging each other. Gone are the herd mentality days.
We have turned into a nation of hive dwellers, humming along, in our inane insect manner, typing away with all this impotent information. Perhaps it is true when they say: “People can live longer without food than without information.” Arthur C. Clark.
CNN reported this week that 61% of most Americans say they believe Osama Bin Forgotten is in Hell. 10% say he is not in Hell, 24% are unsure, and 5% say they don’t believe in Hell. Which brings me to the end of todays post and wondering …. “Why would anyone in Hell even care where he is?”
Now take me for instance, I don’t waste my time wondering where some scum-bag is spending eternity, I devote myself to important matters like, “Where did she hide those donuts?” Now if you will excuse me, I am going into the kitchen and get me a bowl of donkey-hide gelatin.
So much for Wednesday …..
OOO
May 16, 2011
Xtreme Makeover
As Charlie approached middle age, mid-life, he suddenly came to the eye-awakening conclusion that physically, he was a mess. Not only was he going bald, but years of sitting at the desk quoting insurance rates, eating at Denny’s, had given him a rather large pot belly. When asked about his love life, Charlie would sigh and then sadly lament, “If it wasn’t for pick pockets, I wouldn’t have any love life at all.” Old Charlie was not having much success, no matter which approach he tried, the life of a lover was just not working out.
When he appeared at his doctor’s office for his semi-annual physical, the doctor asked him, “Well, Old Timer, I see you are still kicking.” And Charlie replied, “Yeah, but I don’t seem to be stirring up much dust anymore.” While sitting in the doctor’s office Charlie had read his horoscope and it said that he needed to institute a change in his life. Maybe this was the key he thought.
So he flipped the paper over to the Personals section. “Burned out lady, seeks the next getting to know you hour and one-half phone call, preceding over-priced restaurant dinner in which we both trot out our desperate stories and whatever rancid history we happen to have dragged along with us, knowing from the start that it’s a complete waste of time, because the only ones we would really be interested in don’t exist.
Looking for SWM (Single White Male) 35-45, hair, eyes, wallet, etc.” No that won’t work he thought, so he browsed the ads some more. The next personal ad was almost as interesting. “Dolly Parton look alike, raving beauty in her mid thirties, seeks good man with beard or without. Family, not flings, interest me. Broke and hungry, but can cook. Bring food.” Charlie thought to himself, “Hmmmm, this could be her?” Nowhere was the word “hefty or nice personality” and any other adjectives.
This one, he mused, sounded good. So he dutifully sat down and answered the ad. But things just did not work out for Old Charlie, even tho’ he desperately wanted them to. When he showed up at the appointed hour for the date, the lady who accepted his answer to the ad, just doubled over and laughed at him. “That does it! This is the final straw!”
Charlie shouted, “I am going to turn over a new leaf. I am going to become a totally NEW man.”
Old Charlie decided right there, that he was going to get a new look. Setting out to radically change his life, Old Charlie sat out upon his new task, his mission in life. Charlie began a totally new daily regime. He laid off the heavy salad dressing and went for the low-cal instead. He began setting his alarm clock and each morning, he danced through the living room on the “Early Morning Workout.”
He started carrying his briefcase with a new vigor. He began to lift weights and jog at the local gym.
Old Charlie had, it seemed, definitely put some new life in his step. Charlie cleaned out the closets of his life, no shelf was left unturned. “Out with the old and in with the new!” became the war cry of this Hun. No more quick bag of chips for breakfast, forget the candy bars (with the creamy caramel centers) after lunch, it was strictly the Granola Bar for Charlie, this was after all, “serious business.” This changing his life attitude that Charlie had developed from all outward appearances was working.
Old Charlie was determined that he was going to change, to have that NEW look. Not to be detoured, he decided he would go all the way. He went about his business one hundred and ten-percent (110%) he gave it his all. Taking out a second mortgage on his house, he got a new expensive hair transplant (not the cheapie model mind you, he got the Corvette of hair transplants), a pair of new corafam wing tip shoes, patent leather no less. A bright new red PT Cruiser with a CD player and tape deck. Rings, watch, enough gold to hang around his neck it looked like a Mr. T. starter set.
In the short span of six weeks, Old Charlie was a new man, or at least, he thought so. Again he answered the ad in the paper and asked the very same woman out for a date. Pleading his case like a seasoned trial lawyer, sounding like the Ben Matlock of the dating scene, he made his case. He said, “I have changed, you owe it to yourself, to inspect the NEW me.” The Perry Mason of charm had won his case, the lady agreed to meet with him. All of his hard work, his dedication, finally had paid off.
The day for the date arrived. For the first time in a very long time, Charlie was excited as he had never been excited before (kind of like that feeling you get when you get your first bicycle or something like that, right?) almost like a schoolboy facing his first prom. All polished and shining like a Jewel of the Nile, old Charlie stood there on the threshold of the lady’s house, all dressed up for the date. Decked out to the nines, looking better than he had ever looked in his entire life!
The NEW Charlie had arrived. He stood there on the steps of romance and wondered to himself, “If perhaps tonight, he might get lucky?”
Tonight is the night Old Charlie is going to give the lady a ring. “She will be sorry for laughing at me, I am a new man, from top to bottom. Things are going to be a lot different this time around.” As he stood there on the doorstep poised to ring the woman’s doorbell, a bolt of lightning struck him and knocked him off his feet.
As he lay there dying, he turned his eyes towards the heavens and asked, “Why? Why? I have busted my tail for this day, why now? After all I have been through, how could you do this to me?”
From up above, there came a rumbling and a deep, bold voice said ……… Oh, sorry Charlie, didn’t recognize you.” *
OOO
* Any resemblance to anyone living or dead named Charlie, is purely coincidental and should not be construed as an actual representation of fact.
May 13, 2011
Pass On The Fish
One good thing about country living, is the fact, that you are never far from nature. Yesterday, early in the morning in my shop, I watched a moth flutter around the window in a feeble attempt to get outside. He kept hitting the window over and over in his relentless challenge to get outdoors.
On the other side of the window, the drama unfolds even more, it is a small bird who is in turn, pecking on the window and hovering at the same time, trying to make an easy breakfast of the moth. Nature and all her drama, and all you have to do to enjoy it, is move to the country.
I turn on my stereo while I am working, the melodic sound of country music fills my shop (Allan Jackson’s Country Boy readily comes to mind … Reba McIntire I Wish I Were A Boy), shortly thereafter a mockingbird lites on the fencepost outside the door and begins to serenade me at the same time. The birds’ gentle song fills my morning with joy and brings peace to my tired soul.
Life is good in the country. The gradual slow rhythms of the land get you to where you need to go on most days, the red dirt of Oklahoma feels good under your feet, the wind carries the fragrances of the land on the wind. If that isn’t working for you, then I suppose you could move to some place like Wyoming?
Lost Springs, Wyoming, is currently undergoing a population boom, according to the 2010 census. The town now has four people living in it, up from the one who was counted in 2000. That might work. Either way you win, peace and solitude, if that is what you yearn. Not like the hectic, frantic life of the city, where you start every day mulling around in your mind the prospect of just driving a stake through your forehead and being done with it.
We seem to be on the subject of nature so here is something else for all you who dropped by this morning. This past week a team of mountaineers and a Sherpa guide began removing 11,000 pounds of garbage, empty bottles, oxygen canisters, and abandoned tents and ropes from the slopes of the world’s tallest mountain Mount Everest. Almost six tons of trash … You would not think there would be that much junk at the top of the world, but there is.
I am reading of this huge mass of floating crap in the oceans now, as a direct result of the Tsunami that recently hit Japan. Most of it was flushed out to sea, and has made a sort of drifting island of flotsam that is soon to travel as far as Hawaii in the not so distant future.
Last week about a mile off the coast of Japan, coast guard officers in a helicopter spotted a dog on the roof of a house that had been washed out to sea by the tsunami three weeks ago. They rescued the dog and took it to as shelter. The owner of the dog, named Ban, saw a story about the rescue on TV and recognized her dog. She reclaimed her lost dog later that day.
There you go a happy ending for a change. Now go grab a tissue, this next one is most likely going to hack you off.
A bad week for an Arizona teenager who cut himself making a sandwich who has been billed $2,000 for bleeding on the sidewalk. His would did not require stitches, but the city of Peoria wants compensation for calling out the bio-hazard unit to clean up the droplets. “It is really like rubbing salt in the wound of the kid.” I mean hell, do you remember the good old days when your mother worried about the dog licking you in the face? When was common sense outlawed in this country? Did I miss the memo?
Anyone catch this? President Obama accepted an award for supporting government transparency at a private ceremony from which the media and the public were excluded. So much for transparency huh?
Friday the thirteenth, never have been superstitious about it really, it is just another day like any other. As a matter of fact, I have often considered the number 13 as a lucky number for me personally. That is until someone pointed out that it was the the letter M in our alphabet which stands for Marijuana and is also the symbol of the Mexican Mafia. That is one time “too much information” (TMI) kind of takes away from it, you know what I mean?
Might want to lay off the sushi for awhile. Japan’s nuclear utility dumped millions of gallons of radioactive water into the Pacific Ocean recently, in an area where radiation was already 7.5 million times the legal limit because of discharges of radioactive gas and water from the damaged nuclear plant. It had to dump the water so it could store even more highly radioactive water that has been seeping into the turbine buildings. Restaurants are losing customers, and the demand for fish is falling. fishermen across the country were of course furious.
Like I said … Life in the country? Well, it just isn’t all that bad, Y’all.
Have A Great Weekend.
OOO
