album, curmugeon, moccasin, twitter

Monday Curmudgeon

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My inner curmudgeon is our and raving today. Enjoy (or not) at your own risk.

Topic 1 – The Oscars:
Contrary to at least 40% of the blogs I read today, I didn’t watch the Oscar show. To my mind, being subjected to the pablum of a self congratulatory award show is right up there with taking nude sun baths at 20 below in a Siberian winter. Just in case you are a little slow on the uptake, that means I think it is a waste of time. To use one of my favorite phrases: “that proves you don’t have the brains of a kumquat.”

Topic 2 – Twitter:
I actually saw the first intelligent comment ever about Twitter today. Cosmic Variance is one of the best science blogs around and I’m not just saying that because some of the authors are colleagues of my thesis mentor. Anyhow, today Sean expounded on a thought that has been circulating in my head for a month or more:

In the progression from magazines to blogs to Twitter feeds, the tea leaves are clear. I think we need a new social network, on which updates will take the form of nothing more than a single “0″ or “1″.

We can call it “Bitter.”

To which my answer is a heartfelt:

01001000 01000101 01001100 01001100 00100000 10000000 01011001 01000101 01010011 00100001 00100001 00100001

Topic 3 – My First Album:
Tracey over at Sweetney challenged us all to make our first album cover.

(rules courtesy of Best Week Ever):
  1. Go to “Wikipedia.” Hit “random” and the first article you get is the name of your band.
  2. Then go to “Random Quotations” and the last four or five words of the very last quote of the page is the title of your first album.
  3. Then, go to Flickr and click on “Explore the Last Seven Days” and the third picture, no matter what it is, will be your album cover.
  4. Use Photoshop or some other image editor to add text & spiffify.
  5. Post a link to your band’s album cover here! SHOW AND TELL TIMEZ NAO.

So I followed the rules and came up with the platimum selling “few people can handle it” from my newly formed group, Eden Log. The production staff came up with this artwork and I must say I like it.

(For the Wikipedia challenged, random is on the left side about three or four down.)

Topic 4 – My Moccasins:
My moccasins have long been past the end of their life. But I keep using a little baling wire and duct tape to keep them up and running for use around the house because the replacement pair hurt my toes. I have a couple of impinged nerves in my big toes that can drop me to my knees in pain without warning. When the nerves are firing up, any pressure in the right place on my toe and I am in agony. My current moccasins have worn to the point where the problem has been solved. (As you can see in the picture.)

Unfortunately, I think that this summer may be the end of these moccasins. That means that I an going to have to start working on getting the replacement pair broken in. I am a firm believer in the “once something is worn enough to be comfortable, it should last forever” school of thought. Look for me to be cranky from time to time.

For the ascii and numerically challenged among you, the hearty response above is “HELL YES!!!” in binary.

mid-west, rural, wildlife

You know you’re a …

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Most of you know that I am the mayor of a small town in rural Colorado. (After all, you can read the sidebar as well as anyone.) The town and its 1.5 mile radius of influence contains more than 75% of the population in the whole county. Nothing too surprising, until you consider that the county encompasses close to 2000 square miles and that the entire county is home to around 20,000 people. Now you can see why I refer to this as rural area. Some of our neighboring counties are even more sparsely populated. Of course, as the local cattlemen’s association is fond of telling me, “there may be 20,000 people, but there are more than 5 million cattle in a good year.” Add to this the fact that the area is a semi-desert climatically, and you have some interesting peculiarities. So in honor of the sparsity of people and moisture and the large numbers of cows, pigs, ducks, geese, dogs, and other critters, I give you some of the ways you know you are in the rural mid-west:

  • Restaurants:

Senior discount hours start before 4pm and are over by 6pm.

Close before 9pm.

Close Monday since they were open on Saturday.

Open only for lunch and maybe early supper on Sunday.

  • Your tractor cost more than your house *and* has a better paint job.
  • Your farm is known as the “old previous owner’s place” until you die or sell it. Then it’s known as your old place.
  • Your neighbor lives 3 miles away and is “too darn close.”
  • The mood in the area follows the rainfall totals.
  • No one cares much about the stock market, but commodity prices are posted everywhere.
  • Wildlife doesn’t mean an alternative lifestyle.
  • Animal control has to trap skunks as they invade the city and its parks during grub season.
  • Police have been known to chase the deer and antelope back out of town and off the roads before rush hour.
  • Mom did get run over by a deer herd on the way home from Christmas Eve. In town. While I was mayor. (Fortunately, the newspaper didn’t get hold of it. I can just see the headlines: Mayor’s Mother Attacked by Rampaging Herd of Deer on 10th Ave. on Christmas Eve.)
  • That’s a reason to be sure you have a local insurance agent. Imagine trying to tell your agent that a herd of deer ran into the side of your car and jumped on the hood on Christmas Eve – and that no you had nothing to drink.
  • People complain mightily about the 5 minute rush hour.
  • A new stoplight will get more complaints and phone calls to the mayor than any number of potholes on Main Street.
  • It’s a disgrace if it takes you five minutes to get to work in the morning. “The city should do something about that” calls abound. Even if it is due to a broken water main closing a thoroughfare.
  • The county is appealing to the Colorado Supreme Court to prohibit driving your sprinkler system across the county roads. And sprinkler systems have the right of way.
  • You see cellular service being touted on the TV by the tornado chase teams. “Reliable enough for us to use as we chase in real time. All our computers and data acquisition systems depend on the reliable cellular internet service from Viaero.” Of course, the ads always end with “You shouldn’t chase tornadoes.”
  • You actually know which tornado chase team it is.
  • Everyone you meet will smile and say “Hi.”
  • Everyone will try to help you and will find someone who can if they can’t.

Time for Molly and I to resume our regularly scheduled Sunday mope; L has returned to the mountains. Molly hasn’t moved from her dejected perch by the garage door since L left hours ago. I figure about noon tomorrow for the recovery to begin.

brother, minnow, story

Fish Eating Brother

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Since so many of you were curious about my brother and the minnow incident, here is


The Story of the Fish Eating Brother
We lived for several years in a wide spot in the road originally built to handle the oil field workers during the oil boom years in eastern Colorado. The entire community could have easily been seated at a small restaurant with seats leftover. The tone of the area gave new meaning to the phrase “white trash without trailer houses.” In front of our house was a dirt road and a large dryland farm field. Behind our house was waste ground and an oil field equipment storage dump. But the crucial piece of ground was right next door. That was the abode of the McD clan.
The McD clan pretty much ran free range, much like free range chickens. There were enough of them that they were never all accounted for except at meal times. They ranged in age from teenagers to tiny tots. The front yard was full of junk and the equipment and furniture that wouldn’t fit in the house. Things like an old wringer washing machine on the front porch that Mrs McD used to wash the clothes. Quite a sight when it was below zero and snowy. You know, all the things you see a lot of today.
A couple of the McD kids straddled my brother and I in age and since there was no one else near by, we were honorary McD clan members as far as play went. Picture the kinds of trouble we could get into in the middle of nowhere with all that equipment and open space around. The McD clan had an old outhouse on the back corner of their property, which we kids often used rather than going into the house as we were playing. I was about 5 years old and my brother around 4 at the time of this incident.
Now Dad went fishing from time to time and that meant there was often a minnow bucket with a hose running in it to keep some live bait to hand. Nothing was more attractive to us kids than the continuously renewing mud puddle around the minnow bucket. Of course, the minnows were also attractive, but we just knew that playing with them would get us into trouble.
One day, the typical game of one-up escalated to the dare of taking a {*gasp*} minnow. One of the McD clan filched the minnow and, as we all stood around admiring his bravery and skill, Eddie, the oldest McD in the group, proposed that he would pay a glorious 25 cents to whomever would eat the minnow. All heads turned to my little brother. He already had a reputation as the kid that would eat anything. He had gained fame earlier in our group by eating a few bees (while they were still buzzing I might add). He thought about it for a moment and said that he would, but that he wanted the minnow cooked first (so he had at least learned a little from the bee stings).
Cooking the minnow was problematic. None of us was allowed to play with fire. But Eddie had the solution. Since Mr. McD smoked, he would abscond with his matches overnight and the minnow would be re-captured and cooked and eaten in the morning. The captured minnow was returned to the bucket to await the feast and we proceeded on our normal trouble making for the rest of the day.
Mid-morning the next day, the delegation converged on the outhouse. Eddie brought the matches, another McD member brought the minnow, and I brought my brother (or he brought me). So with the 5 or 6 of us congregated at the outhouse, Eddie and my brother stepped inside to do the transaction, leaving the door open so we could all glory in the moment. The minnow was duly transferred to my brother, who held it by its tail while Eddie lit match after match and held them beneath the poor fish. At some point my brother called it done. He then glibly flipped the fish into his mouth, chewed for a bit, swallowed, and held out his hand for his quarter. (A quarter was a lot of money to us then!) Eddie duly paid up and we were left to find some new mischief to get into. That bit of legerdemain had sealed my brothers status as the bravest of the brave. Who else could eat live bees and minnows heated over forbidden matches. He was well on his way to McD clan super stardom.
Unfortunately for my brother’s new found status, we moved to Nebraska shortly thereafter to the town of the My First Bicycle. The only lasting effect was that he was very susceptible to being teased about eating raw fish. (Not like his kindly older brother would ever do anything like that. {*grin*}) He remains a bit touchy about the incident even today.
So there you have it – The Story of the Fish Eating Brother.
feed, rebuild

New feed is up and running

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I lied. I went ahead and got the feeds changed out early. The old mangled feeds have been deleted and a single “correct” feed is now running.

If you were subscribed in a reader, unsubscribe and then click the subscribe in a reader button on the right. If you were a follower, unsubscribe (stop following) and they resubscribe (follow).
Let me know if you hit any oddities. (And thanks for your patience!)
As the old Outer Limits TV show used to say: “We now return control of your set to …”
Dan
dryness, hell hound, static, weather

The Hell Hound Returns

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Anyone who has spent much time reading mythology has heard of the Hell Hounds. (If not click and be enlightened.) However this is not about the mythical hounds of hell. This is about mortal hounds emulating the famed hounds. It is also an excuse for a rambling discourse that finally meanders to a point. Just so you know.
It is dry around here. We have had very little snow or precipitation this winter. It is so dry and the air is so dry that walking down the hall and then reaching for the light switch is a death defying act. One will often get an inch or longer static electricity spark from the switch plate to the nearest part of your anatomy. Not a weak arc either, a bright blue audible snap type arc. The kind that hurt. After a while, you see people doing the static electricity mambo to flick the switch without getting shocked. In my younger days, it might have involved using the socked foot to do the deed. Unfortunately, age is making that a harder and harder trick to carry out without running the risk of conking ones head on something hard, like the floor. I have started pulling the sleeve of my sweatshirt over my hand. (Don’t laugh, it works!) In any case, you get the picture: it is dry as a bone and static electricity builds with every motion.
The other day I woke up at around 4am. I rolled over so I was sitting up on the side of the bed when Molly came over and put her head in my lap. She knows that if she catches me before I get up and mosey down the hall, she can get her head and ears rubbed for a bit. So I fulfill my part of the bargain by gently rubbing her ears and mentally going through the list of things I need to do. It is pitch black because I haven’t turned on any lights. Preparatory to telling Molly that we should get going, I start rubbing her back, from tail to top of head. And it suddenly feels like I am being stuck with little needles. I look down and Molly is completely outlined in a blue nimbus of glowing static electricity which stands out about a half inch from her fur. I rub a bit faster and harder and the glow gets to about 3/4 inch and starts making little popping noises as it shocks Molly and I. Needless to say neither of us cared for that and the rub was over. Molly was still glowing with static electricity as she headed down the darkened hall, but the charge was obviously leaking off and the glow decreasing as she walked.
Watching Molly walk down the hall put me in the mind of the Hell Hounds. (See, I told you there was a point!) Remember in The Hound of the Baskervilles when Sherlock Holmes finds the fake hell hound created by painting the its mouth with white phosphorus? Well, I have a glowing dog without the phosphorus. My own personal hell hound. The only bad thing is that you are supposed to die a sudden and mysterious death if you see the hell hounds three times. I’ve seen Molly a lot more than that. Could mean I’m in real trouble.
One of the local papers mangled a joke this week. It is important to tell a joke correctly. (And it drives me crazy to see or hear a joke mangled. I think it comes from being married to a chronic punch line mangler. L will tell a joke, get to the the punch line and say “I can’t remember the punch line but it was really funny.” and walk away. Don’t do that to those who love jokes!) So here is the corrected joke:
Morris the 82 year old man had a physical. A few weeks later, the doctor saw Morris walking down the street with a gorgeous young woman on his arm , grinning from ear to ear. A few days later the doctor had a chance to talk to Morris alone.

Doctor: “You’re doing great, aren’t you?”
Morris: “Sure am. I’m doing exactly what you told me to.”
Doctor (with confused look): “What was that?”
Morris: “Get a hot momma and be cheerful.”
Doctor: “I didn’t say that!” I said, “You’ve got a heart murmur and be careful.”
Off to await the arrival of L for the delayed valentines and birthday celebrations!
ASIDE (Repeat #2): I plan to remove and recreate anew the feed for this site sometime Saturday to try and clear up the reported problems with the site not showing up in dashboard and/or some readers. The problem seems to be related to having two feeds as a result of some template changes a while ago. So on Sunday (or Monday), please resubscribe in your reader after deleting the old subscription and/or if you are a follower, unfollow and then follow again. Hopefully this will clear up all the problems. Thanks.

Things Done Right