Wednesday's Digressions

• A supervisor occasionally uses my office after I leave for the day when she does the evening clinic. There is a practical purpose as it is closer to the front of the building but sometimes I think she does it (on Friday's anyway) to remind me she stays when the rest of us leave. Monday is the only day my computer ever shows she is still logged onto my machine and I have to switch users.
• Everything is a mind game.
• As a bonus- the aforementioned person sends us inane work related emails at 11:00 O'clock at night.
• My vision is ridiculously blurry as I write this on 01/30/2017 at 0713.24.
• My brother in law is hilarious.
• I have started season 3 of Game Of Thrones and season 1 of Soap. Season 3 of GOT is ridiculously good and Soap is off to a slow start.
• An old friend of mine thought Katherine Helmond who played Jessica on Soap was hot- as in when she would enter the scene for the first time he would have to say, Ohmygawd- she is sooo hot!
• Although I do not know who I thought did it- I was surprised when recently I heard it said on the radio that Blue Oyster Cult was the band that performed Godzilla.
• "I am offensive and I find this Japanese"- a comment for that video that made me chuckle a little.
• The job I am presently working is the first ever that I hate but cannot leave. I keep a picture of Zac up on my monitor to remind me why I cannot leave.
• Once a year or so I have a dream where I am walking down the street in what looks like New York City. My face and the faces of the people I pass are blurry. Everything looks 1970s. The stares of people as I go by make me feel self conscious. As I enter a building there is a mirror which allows me to see everything but my face. My body is squat and I have hairy arms. as I walk into my office I say to my secretary, It is happening again- everybody thinks I am Ed Asner. A drink is poured for me and I shuffle some papers around as I sip it absentmindedly. Suddenly, I jump up cursing and say, I am not Ed Asner! then I jump out the window. I scream and cry and flail and  try to fly back to the window as I fall. It is incredibly realistic. My heart will be beating out of my chest and I will be in a cold sweat when I awaken.
• In case you are wondering- no, I am not Ed Asner.

Monday's Missives

• Speaking of eating garbage: The kids are playing at McDonald's and I'm working on a coffee. 
• Overheard at the next table- She going to represent herself or have a court appointed attorney?
• There is a Mexican girl dressed for church  Mass sitting near me with an absolutely epic unibrow.
• Kayaking is a big deal these days. At Acadamy last night 2 were sold while I browsed and a third was already on hold. Give it a few months and you make a good deal on a barely never used kayak.
• Yesterday (today is 04/07/2016) I passed a guy  driving a mini van who was wearing an oven mitt on his right hand.
• I finished Ex Machina last night. Verdict: Very good- in  a way not a lot of very good movies are made these days.
• I just ate 2 sausage rolls and 3 chocolate eclairs. For some reason I feel sick.
• Yesterday both my morning and my evening drive time shows were talking about Merle Haggard and this morning we learned that he died. They killed him.
• When I was stationed in Germany my family sent me a best hits Merle album. Only years later did I see the personalized notes my family wrote on the inner paper sleeve. That was 31 years ago- I still have the album.

Friday's Dispatch

• While not my favorite bird the tawny frogmouth carries my favorite bird name. Just say it a few times- it feels good.
• It would be nice to see Prairie Home companion live once before Garrison Keillor dies.
• Recently I looked up a long ago ex girlfriend. No- here is where it actually gets weird. Associated with that search were results from my ex wife's step-grandfather's obit. I was not even listed in the obit as our marriage had met its demise many long years before he died. The ex girlfriend and ex wife's lives were not entwined in any way- not even through school, business or church etc. How/why did the teh Internets recognize that we were all associated? What manner of witchery was involved in that algorythmical process?

Wednesday's Digressions

• Ding a ling, mocus, ooky, grody and sickie: all terms I have heard used in nursing. It is all very technical but I'll explain. Ding a ling is a mans reproductive organ. Mocus is a both a play on mucous and Spanish slang. Ooky mean gross. Grody mean gross and you can guess what sickie means because you're smart and good looking.
• This morning 05/09/2015 there was a family of giants sitting next to me in IHOP.
• On the way home I saw two giant fat people on a scooter. He was wearing a leather hat and she a pink string top. It was hilarious. No, I'm not being mean- I harbor no ill will toward them. It is just that two hugely fat people riding a scooter together is funny- it will always be funny.
• It rained like mad this morning and then cleared to beautiful sunny skies.
• Nice
• Tennessee Williams died by choking on a bottle cap. That blows my mind for some reason.
• To be filed under holy smokes I thought I knew how bad it was: 5000 workers died during the construction of the Panama Canal.

Monday's Missives

• Recently (today is 02/08/2016) I had determined to buy a particular piece of outdoor equipment that listed for 120 bucks. As I was about to log onto my REI account to order it I took note of a similar product that was 30 dollars. It wasn't my favorite color (read- it didn't look as cool as the first product) and lacked a feature or 2 the other had but it was one fourth the cost and would do the job 93-98% as well as the more expensive product. It had me buffaloed. I still have not ordered either.
• Update (02/16/2016) so I went back to look at the object of my consternation. The 30 dollar one was no longer listed- at all. Assuming it was sold out but wanting to think the purchase over I went back later to reconsider the more expensive product. What was the first thing I saw? The 30 dollar product was then listed for 69.95...
• A person we knew as aunt when I was a kid has died. She was one of the few remaining links to my childhood. Her name was Daisy. I called her Daisy Duke or Daisy Waisy which made her laugh. When I visited her a few years ago in a hospital and then later a nursing home she would tell staff I was her boyfriend. She was hilarious and awesome. Road trips to her house in East Texas were a big deal when I was a kid and came as often as not from me and my sister wearing our parents down with begging to go as being their idea. In the yard of my ancestral home there are still multiple 20 foot tall evergreen trees my mom mucked from East Texas and carried back to Decatur in Coors cans that had the tops cut off by my dad.
• Someone I know is being asked to be involved in a wrongful termination/whistleblower lawsuit. Said someone has asked my opinion. My well reasoned and articulate response was, Avoid that like the plague. She is going down and wants to take you with her. She wasn't smart enough to consider the consequences for herself when she got fired and doesn't care at all what this would do to you.
• Trust me; I'm almost a lawyer.
• Recently I met somebody whose husband died 8 years after an IED blast near his head caused him to start having severe seizures. He had 5 children.
• Occasionally I still have a dream where I am suddenly transported to my Humvee in Iraq. It is dark except for the ghostly glow of the dash lights. As I look over at Blake my driver I know he is going to die. He looks ghastly. Every time I glance back at him he decays a bit more. He asks me for a dip and I oblige by handing off my can of Copenhagen. There ain't enough for both of us sarge! he says. I'm good man, save enough to freshen up my dip and I'll be good. I reply. He hands the can back to me and without saying a word he smiles through shattered and missing teeth. His face is shredded. I take a dip to add to that already in my mouth. It tastes good but also oddly salty with a bit of dirt flavor. I glance back over and see him starting to slightly slump to the side. I know I am killing him by trying to savor this moment. While looking down to my map (which I can't really see) the Humvee whines and kicks as it shifts. The terrain to my right looks like the surface of the moon as moonlight lights the desert floor. Tears start streaming down my face. I don't want this moment to ever end. I don't want this moment to go on another second.
• Then I awaken.

20 Reasons Sharks Are Better Than Cats

1. There is no LOL Sharks meme.
2. Cats, the musical.
3. If you throw a cat in the ocean, which we do not explicitly advocate, a shark will eat it (if it is around and notices).
4. Every Bond villain worth his salt has a shark-filled aquarium (sure they have a cat too but it doesn’t intimidate anyone).
5. People sometimes back over cats in their cars while in a rush to get to work. The world’s largest fish is the whale shark and you couldn’t back over it unless you had a decent-sized yacht.
6. Early explorers braved falling off the edge of the world, malaria, and the unholy trifecta of rum, sodomy and the lash, but were deathly afraid of sharks.
7. Cats are creepy. People who claim cats aren’t creepy are creepy.
8. No cat movie has inspired a line as memorable as ‘We’re gonna need a bigger boat’.
9. The guy with an eye patch hustling you out of last week’s paycheck is a ‘pool shark‘, for which there is no feline equivalent. If you’re in tough financial straits, you visit a ‘loan shark’ so you don’t have to eat cat food.
10. A cat couldn’t eat Samuel L. Jackson (unless it was his pet and he was left dead in a locked apartment for some time… which is highly unlikely given that he’s a celebrity. We digress…).
11. Sharks taste good in a soup or sandwich; cats require too much sauce.
12. A cat will annoy you by clawing up furniture. A shark will spare you years of such petty annoyances with a fatal mauling.
13. Most sharks can live 30 years or more. Nobody has a 30-year old cat that hasn’t been taxidermied or the subject of some kind of lab mutation.
14. No tabby has ever sent a beach full of bikini-clad beauties sprinting for the shore.
15. The worst a cat could have done to Ahab is give him fleas.
16. Jobshark is a website for people with career ambition, so named because sharks move constantly. Cats sit by the windowsill for 7 hours at a time.
17. Without the phrase “jumped the shark“, it would be difficult to explain this season of Entourage.
18. Dolphins are thought to be the most intelligent creatures of the deep, but sharks eat dolphins. Who’s the genius now lunch boy?
19. No one has ever purchased a baby shark because it was so adorable in the pet store only to regret the decision later on in life when it became a hissing fatbody whose constant shedding ruins your dark clothes.
20. Even if we had a tale about some drunk offing Cuddles, the Cat Fanciers’ magazine centerfold, we would not have included it in the title of our book, “The Man Who Scared a Shark to Death and Other True Tales of Drunken Debauchery”

from thesharkguys.com

I Could Get In A Lot of Trouble With This Rig

"1947 Chevrolet COE Cabover Pickup: A real Jeepers Creepers “Special”!! 350 V-8 engine, Turbo 350 Automatic Transmission, 4X4 rearend with Hummer H1 Wheels (Run Flat Tires!). This Cabover will cruise at 70 mph down the highway, runs and drives great, and always starts the first time! It also has a super cool flame thrower setup, that uses propane gas, and will throw 12 foot flames out the back!! Great for the next car show, or simply lighting your kids fireworks! It has a clear 1947 title. "