Uncategorized

Money Storm!

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Today’s post is a fundraising letter from Congressman Loomis Beechly, representing Minnesota’s 9th District – all the water surface area in the state.

Greetings Constituents,

Yes, the forecast is alarming.

But I want to assure you that I am fully aware that a deluge is headed this way, and I have taken every possible step to prepare for the coming storm.

The expected onslaught will yield unprecedented piles and prodigious accumulations – exactly the type of crisis I have dreamed of facing from the moment I was sworn into this office.

And now, thanks to the Supreme Court, it is coming true. The country’s richest people are finally free to dump boatloads of money on me!

The court’s ruling in the McCutcheon case means individual Americans are no longer limited in the number of politicians they can support with direct contributions. While they will still have a $2600 ceiling per candidate per election, the overall election cycle restriction of $48,600 for Federal office seekers has been removed.

So if you have ever said to me, “Really, you’re the next Congressman I’d write a check to if I hadn’t already hit the limit!”, the McCutcheon decision means that excuse is gone and now is the time to pony up.

And yes, I realize that $2,600 would buy a very nice pony indeed, but as I’ve said at hundreds of chicken dinner fundraisers over the past ten years, “Why waste that kind of cash on such an extravagant gift for your daughter when I’ll be more grateful and I’ll actually listen when you call to offer your sage advice!”

Don’t expect others to take care of this. I don’t have any illusions about this making much difference to the average residential contributor in the waterlogged 9th district. After all, most people who live on the lake have boats, and boats consume dollars faster than horses eat oats. Ordinary people would be much better off giving their money to some worthy non-profit, like your local community radio station!

But major, major, bottomless-bank-account political funders coast to coast – you’ve got the resources and you know who you are. You now have it within your reach to make a maximum offering to every member of Congress! And what hobbyist hasn’t dreamed of collecting the complete set?

Trust me, the complete set has dreamed of being collected by you!

Mega-donors, your phone is about to start ringing. Yes, there will be pleading, cajoling, and some begging. The clamoring voices of Congressmen may all begin to sound the same to you, but if, in the background, you hear the call of a loon, that will be me!

Seriously,
Congressman Loomis Beechly
Minnesota’s 9th

Ever been strong-armed?

Business

Parody Power

42 Comments

The people of the world cannot be divided into groups based on superficial impressions or simple-to-understand categories. I always try to remember that there is more to any person’s story than I can possibly know. Even a fictitious person has layers.

Still, it’s easy to skip over all that and just get mad at a guy who’s obviously feeling pretty smug about his fancy car.

Now I enjoy a good parody on April Fool’s, or any other day. It’s legal stealing to take someone else’s idea and mock it with a near copy, inserting just the right number of tweaks to get your message across.

You’re not going to get rich enough to by a Cadillac if you make your living doing parodies. Unless you’re amazingly good at it. Parody can be deadly effective when done right, but the form has weaknesses. For one, it can fall flat if your audience doesn’t know the original. And in our increasingly fractured media landscape, finding a source document that is universally recognized can be a challenge.

That’s where money comes in handy. Fortunately, Cadillac spent piles of it on the Olympics telecasts to acquaint vast numbers of people with the fellow in the above ad and the towering self-satisfaction that must be characteristic of the target buyer for the company’s newest high-end uber-chariot.

Lots of people felt chafed by that Cadillac ad, and many complained. But the best critics asked themselves one essential question – is it ripe for parody? The answer? In this case, “You bet!”.

Beautifully done. The only thing I would change would be to have that nice shiny Ford smeared with a little healthy manure. But that might have constituted “rubbing it in.”

Why do you work so hard?

The Baboon Congress

Me and “The Girls”

45 Comments

Today’s guest post comes from Renee.

I am a healthy 56 year old person. I rarely get ill. I am not on any medications. My family history is pretty devoid of chronic health problems other than cardiovascular disease, but even that hasn’t kept many of my family members living to very advanced ages. I don’t have a family history of cancer or dementia. I will admit, with some sheepishness, that I don’t have all the yearly checkups a person my age is supposed to have.

I had my last mammogram about two years ago, and the experience still leaves me giggling. Since I don’t go the doctor very often, I don’t have regular experience with cutting edge trends in patient care. I usually have my mammogram at the local hospital, where I have had the same radiology tech for 25 years. It happens in the same room with the same level of more than adequate care each time. I think Rosie, the radiology tech, has worn the same pink scrubs since I met her. We don’t talk much during the procedure, mainly small talk about our respective families and the state of the hospital administration. We sort of ignore the real business at hand, which is fine with me.

I just shut my eyes and think of England.

My most recent mammogram took place at a local clinic where I had gone for a Pap test. The doctor noticed I hadn’t had mammogram in a while, and said I could have one right away in the clinic’s new Mammography Department. I agreed, and was whisked back to the lab/x-ray area where I met the radiology tech. At least, that’s who she said she was. I wasn’t sure, since she was elegantly dressed in designer street clothes, and was perfectly coiffed, bejeweled, and made up. She looked like a highly successful Mary Kay consultant. She oozed friendly concern, doing her best to put me at ease, and led me to the mammogram room, a tastefully appointed space that looked like an upper middle-class living room that just happened to have this weird x-ray machine in it. The lighting was subdued and lovely. The furniture was lovely. The perfectly displayed magazines were lovely. The framed Impressionist reproductions and inspirational messages on the wall (Dream!; Love Like You have Never Been Hurt!) were lovely.

I am pretty modest regarding my person and its private parts. In my professional work I frequently have to educate abused children on the proper names for private body parts, and no matter how often I have to do it, I never find it easy. (I practice saying the words out loud at home when I vacuum). I find the euphemisms for those body parts even more embarrassing than the proper names. Well, the Mary Kay radiology tech really stunned me when she started talking about the parts in question as though they were people, “girls” to be exact. “Let’s get this girl up here!” “Oh, we need to move this girl over just a little so her picture can be really beautiful!” She talked non-stop about the “girls” and their beautiful pictures as though we were at a photo shoot for a fashion magazine. I am surprised she didn’t give them names. Finally, we were done, and the girls and I went home.

I suppose the whole set up was designed to help women feel more at ease during an embarrassing, sometimes painful, and possibly frightening procedure. It didn’t have that effect on me. I want my doctors to look wise and experienced. I want my radiology techs to wear scrubs and look like medical professionals. I want the walls lined with scholarly journals. I know I have little to complain about. I am healthy, and I have never faced to specter of breast cancer. It is about time for me and the girls to go for our next photo shoot. Rosie or Mary Kay? Hmm. I also understand that I am at the age for a colonoscopy.

Oh dear!

What do you expect from a visit to the clinic?

Science

Five Seconds Grace

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Students at Aston University in Birmingham, England have conducted an experiment and claim to posess data that lends credence to the famous 5-Second Rule for dropped food.

They fumbled toast, pasta, biscuits and sticky sweets, and then left the morsels on different types of flooring for up to 30 seconds.

These calculating slobs of science found that time is a significant factor in the transfer of bacteria from a floor surface to a munchie. Remarkably, the experiment found that food dropped on carpet picked up fewer contaminants than food dropped on flooring that is less plush.

Additional findings: that wet food drew more invisible unsavories than dry food, and women were more likely to pick up and eat dropped food than were men. That last one runs against the stereotype that women are less disgusting in every respect. I can only reconcile it by assuming that, rather than pick up dropped food, men are more likely to grind tidbits into the carpet with their feet before plunging their hands deeper into the chip bowl.

Although its findings are contradicted by study after study after study, this unpublished and non-peer reviewed research is good enough for me, because now I can begin to imagine living in a more forgiving world where mistakes can be undone with no penalty as long as you realize it right away.

I’m not saying I do a lot of dumb things, but most of the time while committing my major screw-up-of-the-day I pretty much know it immediately – often while in the act.

Although putting it that way might have been an error.

Never mind. Undo!

What if there was a Universal Five Second Rule (UFSR) that allowed you to instantly take back anything at all if it seemed wrong within five seconds of commission – a contract signature, an unkind word, an errant throw, a dropped match, a Facebook post or an e-mail?

The irreversibility of ill-considered choices is what makes it worthwhile to think before acting. In a world governed by the UFSR, some people would abandon discipline and take back virtually everything. And then there would be an expansionist lobby – if five seconds works, why can’t we make it fifty seconds? Or five minutes?

“A slippery slope,” as they say. Which, if you stepped onto one, is exactly the sort of thing you would want to revoke before the consequences hit.

What is the proper length for a grace period?

Poems

Hair Scare

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For a brief time yesterday the parade of horribles that makes up the world’s news was interrupted by the delightfully wacky story that all North Korean men have been ordered to get the same haircut as the Hermit Kingdom’s leader, Kim Jong-un.

The BBC, which broke the story in the western media, walked it back a few hours later by amending the headline to limit the Hair Dictum to male students, rather than all men.

It remained a nice frolic for feature writers though, because anything involving the suppression of young people is irresistible eyeball candy for the oldsters who follow news headlines all afternoon.

But sourpuss editors who do not want a good time to last too long subjected the story to some journalistic analysis and concluded this entire totalitarian trim tale was probably a hoax, because real North Korean men who have been seen out walking around in broad daylight recently are not sporting Kim Jong-un’s side-buzzed, floppy-topped do.

What a pity. I had already commissioned an ode to Kim Jong-un’s Hair Order from Trail Baboon Poet Laureate Schuyler Tyler Wyler, who is only capable of crafting juvenile sing-song verses.

And once STW begins a project, he cannot stop until he’s done.

I sat down in my barber’s chair
for one more monthly shearing,
For years Bob cut my thinning hair,
a gradually growing clearing.

“I’ll take the usual,” said I,
“the way I always do.”
“The usual?” he said. “But why?”
“The usual’s not you.”

“For I can cut it how you like.
My stylings are the smartest.”
I said “If you can make it spike,
I’ll know you are an artist.”

“A spike,” said he. “I’m on the job.
Your spike will be sublime.”
“If that won’t work,” I told him, “Bob,
the usual’s just fine.”

He spoke at length to every strand,
he clipped and combed and pasted,
Caressed each follicle by hand.
No single hair was wasted.

But as completion quickly neared
Bob’s face slumped in a frown.
The spike that he had engineered
stood briefly, then fell down.

“That’s fine,” I said, “A noble fight.
The challenge was too tough.
It won’t take long to make it right.
The usual’s enough.”

It only took a little while
A peaceful, quiet respite
But when I saw my newest style
I looked just like a despot.

Hair was collected in a clump
Like a racer’s in the luge is.
As if a wild bear took a dump
on Moe of the Three Stooges.

I looked at Bob. His face was cool.
I said, “This is deranged.
I asked you for ‘the usual.'”
“That’s it,” he said. “It’s changed.”

“That spike was never meant to be.
‘Twas preordained to flop.
All hairstyles now, are, by decree,
dictated from the top.”

What’s ‘the usual’ for you?

History, Travel

Three Cheers for Admiral Sir Robert Lambert Baynes

64 Comments

On our recent trip to Seattle on a delightful rainy, foggy day we took the ferry out to an island called San Juan Island, stopping along the way at three other islands in the group called the San Juan Islands.

San Juan Islands 15p

The San Juan Islands mark one of the places on the map I have looked at with longing. I was so enthralled by the two-hour ride I did not even bother with the couple dozen jigsaw puzzles constantly under progress on the ferry.

Ferry 01p

San Juan Island was delightful, better than I had hoped. Perhaps best of all was discovering a little know moment of history. On both ends of the island are a National Historic Park. The north end is called the British Camp; the south end the American Camp. The park remembers what is called either The Pig War or The Pig and Potato War. (I prefer the lilt of the second name myself.) For a full explanation you can consult Wikipedia.

The essence is that after the 49th parallel was made the border between Canada and the United States, with the exception of Vancouver Island, the exact boundary through the San Juan Islands could not be determined for lack of a clear map. Great Britain and the United States agreed on what the boundary should be like but had to wait to see what line through the San Juan Islands would best meet those conditions. San Juan Island was left in limbo and had settlers on it from both countries, peacefully until the day of the pig.

A British settler had a pig which kept getting into the potato garden of an American settler. One day the American had enough and shot the pig. The American then offered the Brit $10 for the pig; the Brit demanded $100. Both sides bristled. Sabers were rattled. American troops landed. Their leader declared he would make it another Bunker Hill, seeming to forget that the U.S. lost that battle. The leader of the British forces, then titled Rear Admiral Robert Lambert Baynes, who later went on to great prominence and a knighthood, was ordered to attack. He refused, explaining that two great nations do not go to war over a pig. For a few days the two sides tried to goad each other into starting a fight, but soon became friends. For a dozen more years, waiting for a peaceful decision, settlers and pigs from both nations lived together in peace, and the two nations had token forces, more comrades than enemies, on both ends of the islands, the sites of the two parts of the National Park.

Vancouver 05p

Eventually, by international arbitration the U.S. was awarded the island. The island is worth a visit today for several reasons. One, for a beautiful view of Vancouver Island.

And a very picturesque lighthouse, The Lime Kiln Point Lighthouse.

Lighthouse 01p

But one thing is missing from the island, a statue of the noble Admiral Sir Robert Lambert Baynes. We put up statues for great fighters. Why not for a great non-fighter? There is a code about statues of military leaders on horses, the number of feet the horse has off the ground telling us if the man was wounded or died in battle. I think Sir Baynes should be shown sitting on a camp stool drinking a cup of coffee.

How should you be posed for your statue?

Uncategorized

Forlorn and Friendless

32 Comments
We are ALL Dr. Babooner
We are ALL Dr. Babooner

Dear Dr. Babooner,

I’m kind of a big deal around this area where I live. I have the most money, anyway, which draws respect and disdain about equally.

People who know me say I can be aloof and disconnected. I have absolutely no idea what they mean by that. I would ask them to explain but then I’d have to listen to their answers, and I always seem to lose interest after the first few words!

Anyway, it turns out there is this bully in the neighborhood who thinks his yard is bigger than the boundary stakes indicate, so he has annexed a piece of the property next door.

That sounds crazy to me but I couldn’t care less who claims to own which flower bed around here. Mostly we all stay inside and watch TV anyhow, and almost nobody is out in their yard, ever. Still, the populace is in a tizzy over this and they’re looking to me to do something.

So now I’m supposed to make everything right. I’d say the chances are pretty slim that people will be happy with the outcome, but I’m still obliged to throw my weight around and act like some Master of the Universe, or something.

And here’s the hard part – I kind of AM a Master of the Universe and I can get my way on a lot of things. But this? I’d rather spend my time trying to solve world hunger than get in a tiff with the biggest jerk on the block over a tiny piece of land.

Everybody’s going to be watching me for the next few days to see what I do about this stupid situation and how I confront this turf grabber. So should I ratchet up my pretend outrage and bluster and fume get all up in his grill, or should I be myself and just play it cool?

Aloofly,
Forlorn and Friendless

P.S. – He has nuclear weapons and so do I, if that matters any.

I told F.A.F. that we often have to put on a show to get what we want, and bringing empty outrage to the table can occasionally make a difference in negotiations. So I was going to tell you to pull out all the stops and let your head explode over this one, just to see if you can get a few concessions in the process.

But your postscript gave me pause. Sometimes there are good reasons to keep the temperature as low as possible. I’d say in this case we don’t want any emotional scenes or misunderstandings. It sounds like you’re both capable of rash actions that would be hard to undo.
Since the neighborhood bully wants more land, maybe there’s part of your yard you could cede to him as a substitute for the one he took over – a harmless swap just to defuse the conflict. You wouldn’t have to give him anything important, just some weedy waterlogged area that is a pain to look after even under normal circumstances. Some place like the state of Florida, for example.

But that’s just one opinion. What do YOU think, Dr. Babooner?

Science

Science Fare

129 Comments

Today’s post comes from Dr. Larry Kyle, founder and produce manager at Genway, the supermarket for genetically engineered foods.

DrKyle

Vindication is mine!

Anyone who knows my work at Genway understands that I have been a misunderstood and lonely pioneer. Scientifically I have blazed unthinkable pathways in the genetic manipulation of plants and animals. And ethically I have set a new standard for non-regulated, devil-may-care experimentation. Have I done things that were questionable? Yes. Ill advised? Of course!

There was a time when people called me mad. MAD, I say! And THEY said it too! They said LOTS of things.

Hah hah hah hah hah hah hah!

When I developed fresh-as-life toast that lived in a terrarium they said I should be investigated.
When I invented the Genway Screaming Halloween Pumpkin, they said I should be prosecuted.
When I used terrier DNA to create barking tulips, they said I should be stopped!

But they couldn’t lay a hand on me because I had no University affiliation and took no money from the government. I financed my work with proceeds from product sales at Genway, and through urgent contributions from neighbors and acquaintances who wanted only one thing from me – that I stay far away from their homes and their families.

Yes, some other researchers called it “vanity science”, and even extortion. But I knew if I waited long enough the rest of the scientific community would eventually come around. And now they have, because I see there is a major article in the New York Times that claims Billionaires With Big Ideas Are Privatizing American Science!

“For better or worse,” said Steven A. Edwards, a policy analyst at the American Association for the Advancement of Science, “the practice of science in the 21st century is becoming shaped less by national priorities or by peer-review groups and more by the particular preferences of individuals with huge amounts of money.”

Yes! Now the most groundbreaking science will be done by those who are best at separating rich people from their fortunes! Whim based research will shape a tomorrow that you won’t recognize and no one can predict. How quickly the Brave New World I dreamt of has become a reality!

The Extra Long Cobra Banana - Delicious Hot or Coiled
The Extra Long Cobra Banana – Delicious Hot or Coiled

Why let government chart a course when the future really belongs to guys who have the twisted curiosity to wonder what might happen if you combined a banana with a King Cobra, and the fat bankroll to find out?

Hah hah hah hah hah hah hah!

And in case you didn’t read it with the right amount of spirit, yes – that’s a maniacal laugh!

Yours in Unsupervised Experimentation,
Dr. Kyle

What sort of research would YOU pay for?

Poems, Science

Twinkle Winkle

37 Comments
Photo by Matt Wier under Creative Commons Attribution Share-alike 3.0 license
Photo by Matt Wier under Creative Commons Attribution Share-alike 3.0 license

I really don’t have the patience to go out and stare at the night sky for very long, which is why I so appreciate it when brilliant people who follow the paths of planets, stars and asteroids tell us that something highly unusual is going to happen and then it does – right down to the second!

Early Thursday morning, March 20, the distant (78 light years away) star Regulus will be briefly obscured for sky watchers in parts of New York, New Jersey, Connecticut and Eastern Canada by the passage overhead of an asteroid named Erigone, pronounced (air-RIG-oh-knee).

Is this a big, jaw-dropping kind of space event, like a solar eclipse or an incandescent alien swarm of interstellar bees engulfing the moon and setting it on fire?

No! But it is quite rare. Rare enough so that maps have been published and in the nation’s most populous area serious people are thinking about staying up until 2 am to see a tiny light in the sky not be there for about 14 seconds, and then come back.

Simple pleasures are the best.

Pleasures as simple as a familiar nursery rhyme, re-cast as a conversation between an Earthbound observer and a distant light.

How appropriate that each verse, when sung sweetly, lasts exactly as long as Regulus will be invisible.

Regulus, so far away,
Spotted you towards break of day.
You’re a bright but tiny dude.
Star of the first magnitude!
Regulus, intense and proud.
Shiny, showy, sharp and loud.

Twinkle, Twinkle, little star
Now I don’t see where you are!
You were there but now you’re dark.
Were you light or just a spark?
So long star. This has been real.
Hey, you’re back! So what’s the deal?

Asteroid Erigone,
floating between you and me,
had the angle and the size,
to obscure me from your eyes.
Briefly blotted out, you see.
Thanks a bunch, Erigone!

Twinkle Twinkle, little star.
Resurrected! There you are.
Thought I lost you for a time.
Just a verse within this rhyme.
That was much too long, I think.
Twinkle, winkle, twinkle, wink.

Some people, Hollywood stars, mostly, can pull off a wink and make it seem sexy. When I wink it just looks like I’ve got something stuck in my eye, which is why I never do it.

What makes a wink work?

Uncategorized

Yawn of a New Day

34 Comments

Today’s post comes from Bart the Bear.

He Found a Smart Phone in the Woods
He Found a Smart Phone in the Woods

Yawn.

Hibernation time is over for me. I’m up. It’s … yawn … not a good time to be searching for food. That’s true every year. But this year is the worst I’ve seen in a long time – basically nothing but snow wherever I look.

I Googled “Hibernation” just to read up on it a little bit. Since there’s nothing … yawn … to eat, I figured I might as well feed my mind. And there’s a lot of stuff I didn’t know, and I’ve been hibernating every year … yawn … for my whole life.

That part about the build-up and expulsion of a “fecal plug” was news to me, and also it was extra gross. Not to go into too much detail, but now I know why I’ve always thought someone was waiting around to take a pot shot at me every year when I came out of my den.

When you’re a bear, every loud POP sounds like gunfire.

But anyway … yawn … it’s a challenge to wake up when you’re weak and under-nourished. So I’m … yawn … yawning. I’m writing in the word “yawn” whenever I do it just to let you know how … yawn … bad it is. It’s bad. Did you notice? I’m yawning a lot.

So to get the image of that fecal plug out of my mind, I Googled “yawn” and found out a lot, including that it’s contagious, like a disease. If I … yawn … yawn and you’re watching me, or even just reading something I … yawn … wrote … you might start to yawn too. People used to think this was happening because there was some feeling of empathy between the yawner and the person being yawned at – the yawnee.

Yawn.

It turns out that’s not true. At least not in this study. What they found instead is that it varies – some people don’t catch yawning from another person – they’re resistant to it. Old people are especially resistant.

I’m thinking … yawn … that the geezers were already asleep, but the study didn’t say that.

All I know is … yawn … when I open my mouth wide at people they can do two things – take pictures or run like Hell. Or both, in that exact order.

But they sure don’t yawn back.

What behaviors do you pick up from other people?