Postcards of the Day: Party Time!

 This week, Pop celebrates the 90th anniversary of his birth. I'm baking a pie or two, in honor of the occasion, and we'll have a bit of a celebration with our closest friends.  First we send the invitations,

and wait for the replies

Then there's the party, followed by the realization that we were FAR from politically correct in our conduct…

but nobody around here really cares.

It's just how we do things, here.

And maybe in Kansas City, too.

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Postcards of the Day: Fishing for Laughs

 We've gotten a bit of rain, this week, so I have new plans for the garden….   ;)

I feel that way about baking, as well as fishing. But not necessarily fishing while baked…

Not sure what one can catch, other than a cold (or, maybe some serious heck from the authorities, for his technique.

But then there's always the girly fishing style... for a different sort of catch.

Part Toot of the Story

Just the other day, I posted that The Bat's Basement Cat had decided to bury my gassy ass at bedtime, heaping the blanket over the offending orifice and all that surrounds it. It may not have made you laugh, but it faintly amused me that a cat who didn't even make the effort to bury his own stink felt the need to deal so with mine.

He's done that every night since then. Last night, though, he gave his ritual a twist.

While I was lying on my side, with the Kittygirl under the covers for her ritual conversation and my ceremonial massage of that one spot on my shoulder, The Boy was stretched along my spine, relaxed as he could be. Abruptly, he stood up and started pulling the blanket into a heap by my posterior. I turned my head and got a whiff of something powerful that was not mine, and I knew for a fact had not come from Kittygirl.

In fact, I was afraid The Boy might have had an accident on the bed.

But NOOOOOoooo. Aside from some cat fur, the bed was clean.

Boykitty had just ripped a big one, and blamed me.




The little brat just pulled a Dad-and-the-dog-fart on me.

I hope to God this isn't the start of a trend.

Earworm of the Day: Please Don't Take Our Tree For Christmas

O Tannenbaum this is not. But it is very… something.

The Nutty Squirrels were a bebop knockoff of Alvin & the Chipmunks, and a welcome reprieve, for me, from the Chipmunks Christmas Song (which always gets so much air time during the sprawling holiday season).

It's a pity the squirrels didn't withstand the ravages of time in show biz. They were pretty hep cats, as tree rats go.

Earworm of the Day: Does Your Chewing Gum Lose it's Flavour?

Imagine this getting stuck… in one's head.

I managed to surf through more of the late Lonnie Donegan's songs, pushing the gum out of my ear... if it didn't work for you, have a drink on me. If it does work, rockin' Hallelujah!

Earworm of the Day: The Good, The Bad and The Ugly

I was scrolling my social media feeds late Thursday evening, and stumbled across a .gif made from the famous gunfight scene in this classic western movie – a much longer one than this one. Naturally, I started whistling the theme from the movie.

Right before sleep.

It's Not the Cough

I hadn't had bronchitis in nearly a decade. Life was pretty good, at long last, I thought. And then came this summer.

After my exhausting trip out west and back, I guess my resistance to viruses was somewhat lower than it had been before my travels.

So I'm enjoying the thrill of having acquired a very nasty deep cough, exacerbated by the high pollen count triggering post-nasal drip, which, in turn, triggers a constant tickle in the back of the throat, which means a steady shallow cough, and, well, let's just say that a couple more months like this, and my abs should be bikini-worthy. Well, not really, but they're definitely getting an exceptional workout.

Several of my friends have also been hit with this bug, and I'm wondering if they discovered the one thing which I'd almost forgotten, from all my many earlier bouts with respiratory hell: if you're not careful, you can run out of toilet paper.

I'm pretty sure most people, when they hear that a nasty cough is going around, don't even imagine this could be a problem. After all, it's a cough. Just a cough. You know, a little uncomfortable lung activity. Clear the throat, force a little air past those tightening bronchi, all in the upper torso, nothing else (unless, maybe there's the possibility that you, say, throw your back out, or bite your tongue, or some such). And, if you believe people involved in show business, then a nasty cough sounds and looks a lot like Anne Elk clearing her throat.



(I saw a cough medicine commercial where the "sufferer" sounded just like that. Honestly. Real, deep, clear-the-lungs coughs resemble this in the same way that cow pats resemble fly specks. Both are unpleasant, but there are several orders of magnitude between the one and the other. But if the advertiser is treating only this level, I can see how it might be successful. For me, over-the-counter drugs are pretty much useless.)

But there is so much more to it than just a cough. There is that moment when the body, in paroxysm, works to expunge everything. Everything. That little bit of pressure you were feeling from your bladder just a minute ago…no longer.

It's a little bit like being a kid getting ready for a long trip in the car. "Did everybody go to the bathroom?" Even if you didn't think you needed to, you still needed to, because you never knew when the next opportunity would arise, and you couldn't predict how many big bumps there were in the highway before you reached that next rest area. Moms teach you these things. So does experience.

When given a choice of teachers, go with Mom.

And, so, for the sake of my wardrobe – and my sanity, such as it is – I requested that we increase our supply of tissue rather dramatically, just in case.

Because, despite Ogden Nash's claim

It's not the cough that carries you ough,  

It's the coffin they carry you offin 

as bad as it is, the part of bronchitis most maddening, to me, isn't really the illness itself.

It's trips to the potty that drive you dotty.

Are you sure you want that system?

Your -ism or -archy may seem very nice

If you think you'll sit at the top of the -arch.

Will you be so pleased with your new world order

When some total stranger tells you how to march?

-rk

Coulter "silenced" by treatment ofr broken jaw?

A few on the left and NBC (pardon my redundancy) are reporting that Ann Coulter is "silenced" after having her jaw wired shut. Somehow, she broke her jaw (no actual journalism to discover why or how, of course). Then, in order to help it heal, she had it wired shut.

I've had a couple of friends who've had their jaws wired shut, and, let me tell you, they were not silenced. One of them, in fact, talked a lot more while she was wired than she had before the surgery. Of course, that was because, before the surgery, she had spend a lot of time stuffing food into her mouth, and, while recovering from the auto accident which cracked her jaw in three places, she managed to lose nearly seventy pounds... mostly through conversation, I think. (I hope she will forgive me, if she's reading this.)

They don't stitch your lips shut when they wire your jaw shut. You end up just speaking a little differently -- say, like Gloria Upson -- is all.

Besides, Coulter knows how to type and use the innerwebz. Even if it gets too hard to carry on an oral conversation, she can still rip through folks with her column's talons.

Silenced, my Aunt Frances.

The perfect prediction

Okay, so here I am posting the readings each day, meanwhile enjoying the arrival -- each day -- of my horoscopes (regular and Chinese, for entertainment only), when what to my wondering eyes should appear but this:

Here is your horoscope for Friday, November 14:

Warm regards,

I think that covers everything. 'Nuff said.

I'm thinking of taking up coffee again

I quit drinking coffee more than a decade ago, when I discovered it caused muscle spasms in my jaw. But now, I'm seriously considering returning to the old habit. The reason? It just may ease some of my back problems.

Whee!


HT: JWF

Lost and found cat stuff

As is my habit, of late, I followed a recommended link, which led me to another, which led me to this: The Lost Gnostic Gospel of Feline Mercy

In light of my having found this on a Sunday, followed immediately by this, I'm beginning to think some bunny-head is trying to send me a message, or something.

Pigging it lovingly, 21st century style

In my training for work at Colonial Williamsburg, lo, these many years gone by, I was given a journal in which the author had spent a night at a one-bedroom farmhouse/inn, sharing his bed with the owner, his wife, and multiple children, "pigging it lovingly," as would a sow and her litter.

I think this carries the concept a little too far:

RCMP have arrested a pair suspected of stealing 22 pigs from a barn near Sussex, N.B., in a getaway that police say was likely a very tight squeeze.

snip

The two from Petitcodiac, aged 19 and 20, are suspected to have used one small car to haul the 22 pigs, weighing 23-27 kilograms each [approx. 51-56 lbs.], from the farm to the house in Havelock where police tracked them.

For those of you who are farm illiterate, we're talking about wedging into a compact car 22 animals whose dimensions approximately match those of a mid-sized dog. Plus the two thieves. Plus any ... uh ... pork by-product which may work its way to the floor.

Const. Jim Gass said the stench from the pigs was immediately apparent to investigators, who found a small car, filled with pig droppings, as well as sacks used to transport the pigs.

"This little car they transported them in once had like 22 pigs," Gass said. "Man, it wasn't a lot of room in the car. She would have been a noisy affair, I would imagine, and quite a wild ride. Something you see in the movies, I would guess."

I wonder who squealed on them?

(HT: Jungletrader, working backup at Jules Crittenden's blog)

EclectEcon discovers underwater harvest

He's roving on the other side of the Pond, this season, and has come across mussel farms in Kilarry Fjord in Ireland.

This begs spawns* the question from a Midwesterner: how tough is the job of bivalve farmer? (scroll down)

It also brings up a simple observation: I love a man with mussels.



*There's nothing like catching yourself in an embarrassing misuse of terminology.

Gratuitous postcard: I've saved a seat for you, this Sunday

In keeping with the spirit of this day, I have set aside a spot for you to sit, on this fine morning of Sunday, April 1, 2007:



April Fool!


(Posting a little early, since I'll be away for most of the day, again, as usual for Sundays.)

How Cold Is It? Check for Chilblains

Even now that we've seen our first day above 20º F. in a few weeks (hey, it got up to 42º here!), Rick Moran, over at RightWing NutHouse is a bit chilled, this winter, and wonders what people used to do long, long ago to amuse themselves when they were shut in during the deep of winter.

I know what my mom used to do, only a decade or so ago.

We worked together at the world's largest outdoor museum. We were hired on the same day, trained in the same class, and often worked the precise same schedule (that was rare, for any two people, back then. I have no idea how it works now, since they've had what seem to be biennial management upheavals). We also often worked the same sites with the same people (also rare, considering how many are employed by the Foundation).

There was one young man in particular who had ... limited life experience, shall we say? He was in his mid-twenties, and may just have been the man to send shopping for sky hooks and left-handed paintbrushes. This young man used to come to work on mornings when the temperature dipped below 58º F. crying out how bitterly cold it was out there.

Mom, being the sort of person she is, would turn to him and say, "That's not cold! You don't know what cold is!" Then she would proceed to tell him about the time (1978 or '79, I think) when she was coming back from the East Coast by train, came through Chicago's Union Station, boarded the train for that last leg of the ride home (toward Galesburg, IL). The train pulled out of the station, and then just sat there. With the heat going full power, the car was a balmy 36º, according to one passenger. Mom had a blanket, plus she was dressed for winter, but it got right nippy, as they say.

They sat there, just outside Union Station, for six hours (she emphasized this miserable wait). The conductor finally came on the public address system to announce that they were going to be there a while longer, since the minus 32º (with wind chill bringing it down to minus 64º) arctic blast had frozen the switches in the rail yards, and they'd had to bring out crews with blowtorches to thaw the switches out before anybody could go anywhere.


So, Mom would recount this tale, every time the young man complained of the cold in Tidewater, Virginia. And the young man would always respond with, "Oh, Mrs. K., you always tell that story!" and Mom would always respond to him, "That's right, dear. Every time you complain about the cold...."


I'm not sure he ever quite figured out how much Mom was yanking his chain.

But it was darned cold that year. I think that was the year I learned the language of temperature.

Ill-clad starlets and beaver shots: Gratuitous Postcard edition

Not to be left out of the discussion being had on so many important blogs, this week, I decided I had to offer my own views on the badly-dressed blondes who frequent Hollywood's night spots, and about the increased number of "beaver shots" the press is getting (do they really find these things interesting?).

Therefore, I submit to you an under-dressed blonde starlet of perhaps dubious talents


and a gratuitous moist beaver shot


What's the big deal?

Your tax dollars -- and journalist's grammar -- at play

The Galesburg Register-Mail tells us that the Dept of Ag has been giving out money without proper procedure, involving incomplete paperwork and such other omissions. In the AP article's first paragraph, it says:

The Agriculture Department on Wednesday acknowledged making improper payments to farmers worth more than $2.8 billion last year.

What I want to know is, why would a farmer worth more than $2.8 billion need money from the gummint, anyway? Yer darn tootin' it's improper! The regular Joe-Bobs need it more!

Jeepers!


My pet peeve: the author of the article also used "loan" as a verb: "...the agency loaned $9 million over six years to farmers who shouldn't have gotten loans." Ew. The word you were looking for, friend, is "lent" -- like the Catholic season of sacrifice, but lower case and secular. They were Money Lenders, not loaners.