Today’s guest post comes from Barbara in Robbinsdale.
One of the reasons I like to travel – especially when it’s “over the surface” of the country by car or train, is that I always come home with a slightly different perspective on my life.
Being in touch with all that space just gives one pause, and last month’s road trip to Utah is no exception. The highway (I-70) that we drove through Colorado’s Rocky Mountains was lined with aspens that look like yellow flames in the dark evergreen forests.
In southern Utah, one canyon made you think you’re in a cathedral, and the second must have been dropped there from another planet.
We noticed all kinds of little differences between there and home – names like Grizzly Creek and Hanging Lake; towns called Eagle, Leadville, Rifle, Yellowcat. Road signs warned of “Falling Rocks” or “Avalanche Area”.
And sure enough, several times along Utah’s scenic Highway 12, we slowed for small groups of cattle grazing in the ditch.
The Cathedral-like Zion National Park, Utah
Undeniably True
Bryce Canyon – Extraterrestrial Scenery
My favorite road sign, “View Point Ahead”, echoed my mood.
I am prepared to come home from any journey with a change in point of view – I look forward to it. This time I’ve arrived with shifted priorities, ready to explore what I can and cannot do with my life.
The following message was found scrawled in fiery hot red sauce on the underside of a scraped-clean leftovers container outside a barbecue joint in Memphis, Tennessee. The partly-melted Styrofoam was sent to Minneapolis for analysis in the FBI’s Mississippi Watershed Crime Lab, but when it got switched up with a lunch container brought to work by an agent from Eagan and was subsequently dropped (erroneously) into a recycling bin, it got separated out with other materials that were contaminated by food waste and came to the attention of the agency’s Midwest Director of Suspicious Debris, who immediately forwarded it to the Department of Homeland Security, who gave it to the CIA, who handed it over to the Secret Service, where they set it out on the North Portico of the White House because it smelled too funky to bring inside. A gust of wind caught it and the Styrofoam wound up landing at my doorstep. I probably shouldn’t have read it, but I did. And now I share it with you.
Ahoy, Landlubbers,
I has it on good authority that there’s gonna be a Red Moon on th’ mornin’ of October 8, 2014.
Lots of guesswork is goin’ on as t’ th’ possible meaning, an’ none of it ’tis good since red is th’ color of emergency an’ danger an’ blood.
Several of me boys has become quite excited about this, thinkin’ that perhaps th’ advent of a prominent Red Moon might mean some kinda change in their otherwise miserable an’ monotonous lives. Fer them what sees it, th’ shade of th’ lunar orb is supposed t’ be a tad dramatic though any actual lasting effect is highly unlikely.
Here’s a lovely chart about th’ event, made by a sober individual wi’ a scientific mind.
Me boys is a bit too fanciful t’ put much stock in a scientific document like th’ one above. They’s much more influenced by folktales and sayins, ‘specially them what is easy t’ remember.
An’ rumor has it that there is plenty of popular sayins regardin’ sky color an what sailors is likely t’ expect as a result. So of course I Googled ’em an found some on th’ nautical website gCaptain.com.
Red sky at night, sailor’s delight, Red sky in the morning, sailors take warning.
Evening red and morning gray, help the traveler on his way Evening gray and morning red bring down a rain upon his head Orange or yellow, can hurt a fellow.
I ain’t never heard none of these sayins, so I surveyed th’ crew an’ sure enough, several of me boys swears by ’em, especially that one about sailors an’ delight. An then they tells me there’s some extra sayins what is especially about a Red Moon as it relates t’ its position regardin’ the vessel.
Red Moon rising before, pirates should all be sent ashore. Red Moon falling behind, pirates should not be confined. Red Moon beside, extra helpings of grog should be tried.
I allowed as how I’d never heard none of this, but rather I had a different set of sayins in mind.
When the Moon rises Red, I’ll swat yer head. When the Moon rises Scarlet, no fun fer the bar lot. When the Moon rises Ruby, just do yer duty. When the Moon rises Crimson, yer at my whim, son.
Th’ boys was not impressed wi’ them sayins, an’ Gimpy claimed I made ’em up. But what if I did? All sayins has t’ be made up by someone at some point – so why not me, an’ why not now?
Make up a new saying about the meaning of a Red Moon
Today’s post comes from Bart, the bear who found a smart phone in the woods.
H’lo, Bart here.
We get a lot of scientists out here in the woods. I mean lots. More of them than normal people, almost. I think it’s ’cause scientists get paid to come out and do experiments in the chill and the damp with bugs all around, so they have to stay until the work is done even if the weather gets horrible, which it eventually does.
So we can always be pretty sure there’ll be a scientist in the woods, no matter what time of year.
By contrast, normal people who climb into their campers and come to the woods for some R & R will turn tail and get out as soon as it stops being fun, which usually takes 48 hours, or just about one day if they have kids.
People are funny that way, which is why I decided to text you on this since you are one and maybe you understand this.
I’m not really too keen on knowing the name of the geologic age we’re living in, but I couldn’t help noticing the Smithsonian has declared this “The Age of Humans” as a way to drive home the undeniable point that humans have changed the climate with all their activity, and especially their gasses, which they emit at an alarming rate.
Humans also emit a lot of attitude, which is what you need to name a whole epoch after yourself. And by “epoch,” I mean tens of millions of years. That’s pretty bold! I’m not saying it’s a lie, but couldn’t you find someone else to give you the award, so it would at least seem like a surprise?
That’s all I’m saying. I’m a bear. We’re friends. If you’d asked me, I would have given you the “Anthropocene” award and it would have been genuine and heartfelt. And you wouldn’t have seemed to be so self-absorbed. As it is, you’re looking like the guy who throws a surprise birthday party for himself. Not too cool.
So here’s the deal – I’ll say this is “The Age of Humans” if you’ll return the favor, and in a few million years from now make a spontaneous declaration that “The Age of Humans” has ended, and we’ve transitioned into “The Bear Era.”
That’s politics – I’ll scratch your back and you scratch mine. Even though in reality me scratching your back would probably be physically catastrophic for you, and you scratching my back would maybe shake loose a few ticks.
But anyway, you know what I mean. It’s a quid pro quo with the payoff (for us) impossibly far away.
But I’m pretty confident there will still be bears by then, and having a geologic era defined by bear activity would be incredible! Imagine it – the whole planet’s surface, covered with berries and turned into a hibernatorium! Sounds like paradise!
Word that a new topographical map of the sea floor has revealed the existence of thousands of mountains rising from the bottom of the world’s oceans sent me scurrying to the local tavern, where I found Trail Baboon poet laureate Schuyler Tyler Wyler in his usual spot in the dark recesses at the back of the establishment, once again trying to extinguish the tragic flame of disappointment which burns at the center of his tormented soul.
He greeted me as he always does, with these words:
“Go away. I have no poems.”
This is a self-defeating theme for S.T.W., who believes he was born 100 years too late, long after Americans stopped appreciating poems that rhyme.
“Every possible word combination has been tried already,” he whined. “I have arrived at the scene too late, just like an explorer who discovers his mountain has been climbed.”
But when I told him that there were now thousands of new mountains that haven’t been seen or conquered, he brightened up. When I commissioned a few lines of verse to commemorate the discovery, he positively beamed. And when I paid him half the total as an advance, he immediately used the money to buy three more drinks so he could get to work.
A giant lurks beneath the waves – a monument to time. As stately as a mansion and as as silent as a mime. I see its summit shimmer – such a distant, lonely place. I resolve to face this monster and to climb it to its base.
Every mountain is a challenge to go where no one has been. So the brave heart makes provision – boots, a backpack and a fin, and with stiff determination not to falter, fail or drown the adventurer approaches and proceeds to scale it down!
On the summit of Mt. Salty I’m exuberant. I brag. On the pinnacle of Salty I have placed my simple flag. I drink in the scene around me as I relish my moment, then embark upon the process of a swift, controlled descent.
As I climb it becomes darker. It gets colder as I go. But I’m grateful it’s not windy and there isn’t any snow. With each step I feel the pressure to achieve this mountain’s root. Do I have the strength and courage to ascend it to it’s foot?
It is nighttime on the mountain when I make my little camp, I am tired but determined. In my tent, it’s rather damp. As I close my eyes I see how I’ll defeat this pile of slag. At the bottom of Mt. Salty I’ll look up to see my flag.
But my sleep is so unsettled. I’m untethered and alone. I am tossed about in waves of doubt and buffeted by foam. In my dreams I feel I’m floating far away from what I seek. When I wake, I see my banner – far below me, at the peak!
He’s got Japanese roots, but was actually born in Georgetown, KY. He was named after Miles Davis, one of the greatest jazz musicians of all time.
He’s kind of blue, and he’s reached the age where he’s comfortable with his body and his looks
Miles has visited each coast, been to Canada several times, and almost been to Mexico. He’s traveled nearly the equivalent of a one-way trip to the Moon. He’s gotten a few bumps and bruises along the way, suffered a few minor internal ailments, but otherwise has aged pretty darn gracefully for being 23 years old.
He’s into the Neo-Renaissance thing, and has many and varied interests.
He’s been a good friend for all the right reasons: faithful, reliable, and dependable. He also gets along great with my wife since he spent a lot of time with her the first half of his life, and they’re still on good terms with each other. He can keep a secret better than anyone I’ve known (when we’re out together with the windows closed and I rant about bad drivers or outrageous/stupid/ignorant things I hear on the radio). Based on a few close calls we’ve had, he’s always been willing to put himself in harm’s way to protect me.
He’s health conscious, but also has a sense of humor.
Sometime in the next year or so, Miles will retire, hopefully to a good home that will take care of him in his last years. I don’t want to be the one to pull his spark plugs, so I’d like to either sell him to someone who will use him gently for his remaining time, or donate him to the radio station he learned to love after all those years, Minnesota Public Radio. His favorite show was Leigh Kamman’s The Jazz Image. Yeah, late Saturday night drives home while listening to all those great jazz tunes were some damn good times together.
He’s interested in politics.
His politics were always a little bit different, but he’s a live and let live kind of car, so that’s cool.
He’s a long-time supporter of worthwhile charities
But his heart (engine) has always been good and true, and he believes in helping those less fortunate, (maybe getting a good meal out of the deal after taking the Big Brother (owner) and his Little Brother up to the BWCA for some canoeing and camping.)
When he slowly rolls to his final stop, I hope he’ll be c(a)remated rather than tossed into an open graveyard with hundreds of other rusted old heaps. Better to recycle his useful elements ASAP than have him slowly decay and pollute the ground water.
As his final day approaches, I find myself feeling sad and melancholy. I took him for granted for the first twenty years or so. I always assumed he be there, start on command, get me where I wanted to go fast and efficiently. I would let him go weeks, even months without a shower; throw trash in his backseat; let dust, dirt, mud, and a multitude of food crumbs accumulate in his cracks and crevices; and delay taking him in for regular checkups. At least I made sure he got his annual or biannual oil transfusion. I wasn’t nearly as good a friend to him than he was to me.
He loves to visit wild places, and he’s a firm believer in self-reliance and personal responsibility.
Yet Miles never complained, always had a smile on his grille, always purred like a tiger when I started him up each day. But only rarely would I pat him on the roof and say, “Nice job, Miles. That was a bad storm you just got us through,” or “Thanks for a smooth ride.” Even though I ignored him a lot, I was grateful for every safe trip we ever took, even the shortest trips down to the local convenience store for gas, or bananas and milk, or a late-evening summer ice cream run.
So thanks Miles. For everything: Every new mile. Every new road. Every new town. Every new vista. And all the old ones, too. I’ll miss you when you’re gone. Ashes to ashes, rust to rust.
My question: Why do we anthropomorphize and befriend inanimate objects such as cars? Tell me about your most trusted and rusty friend.
Today’s post comes from perennial sophomore Bubby Spamden, who, as the poster child for the campaign against social promotion, has spent 20 years in the 10th grade at Wendell Willke High School.
Hey Mr. C,
Did you see what Microsoft did yesterday?
It’s awesome, and it fills my heart with hope. They decided to introduce a new version of Windows – “Windows 10″! But here’s the cool part, and believe it or not I first heard about it on your blog when “Happy Valley Steve” made this comment –
How about that – ME learning tech stuff from YOU! Pretty amazing. I guess old people aren’t a total waste after all. Who knew?
That’s almost as amazing as the other part of the story – Microsoft totally disrespecting the number 9 by jumping over it! A lot of people are upset about this, but I think it’s cool because skipping steps is why I keep getting held back.
Like in Mr. Boozenporn’s history class two years ago. I was just barely making it. Everything was riding on the grade for this class, and Mr. B had everybody do a final project, which was supposed to be a six page, single spaced, typed report about a historical event or thing or person, and I chose William Henry Harrison who was the first U.S. President to die in office (after only 32 days!) and whose brief term helped people work out all the rules about what to do when the president dies in office.
It was actually a pretty good report. I worked kinda hard on it, which is strange for me! But then I didn’t hand it in. I don’t know what happened. As soon as the report was finished I kinda lost interest and I never even brought it to school. I’ve still got it in my room – it’s under the goldfish bowl where it soaks up condensation that drips off the tank sometimes.
Anyway, not handing that in got me an “F” and another year as a sophomore at Willke. My folks complained but Mr. B was firm. “Bubby skipped a step,” he said. “Giving him a passing grade wouldn’t be fair to the other students who completed their work.”
I tried to argue that not handing the paper in was really a clever way to mirror the Harrison presidency – all potential with no actual follow-through, and a sense of disappointment all around. But Mr. B. saw through that one. He told me to quit trying to sabotage myself.
So here I am trying to pass my sophomore year again. I’m not saying I’ll do the work and not turn it in, but I wonder if he’ll let me write a report on Windows 9?
My brother was an early adopter, always wanting to be among the first to try a new thing, especially electronic stuff. He got out ahead of the crowd on laser video discs, for example. I remember marveling at the colorful LP sized platter that he brought out when it was time to watch a movie on that early machine. The thing whirred and heated up and eventually spat out some video that was a darn sight better than what we were seeing on VCR at the time, but of course it was nothing like today’s HD discs. He only collected a few films in this format before it became antiquated.
I can’t think of a time when I’ve been ahead of the crowd. Although I started to do an audio podcast around about the time the first enthusiasts lost interest in them, and now I understand they’re all the rage again, so I was both too late and too early to catch on to that trend.
There’s one branch on a tree in the back yard that thinks we’re at mid-October already. It spotted the “going orange” trend early and decided to jump in with abandon, though I’m sure some of the nearby limbs are thinking it’s a little soon to stake out that territory. What if the “hot” leaf color turns out to be blue this year?
It’s not hard to accept the idea that man’s earliest attempt at humor was a fart joke. It feels right. But the second was probably a prank of some kind.
I have never been a fan of the game some DJ’s play when they make and broadcast prank telephone calls because it seems so unfair to make a show out of mocking strangers. This is odd because I did morning radio for more than 25 years. Fooling any unsuspecting person for your own amusement was a base element in the chemical profile of your standard wake-up show back then. Still is, probably.
And even though I didn’t care for elaborate put-on and almost never committed one, some of my fondest memories from those years are connected to one April Fool’s morning when we said, as straight-faced as possible, that we had been knocked off the air by a technical difficulty and did not know when we could get back on. The size of the problem was unknown, I told listeners, but we were trying to plot the extent of the outage by sticking pins to a map on the wall.
“Call the studio,” I said, “if you can’t hear us.”
The audio is still online, here. We start the prank about 100 minutes into the show. Honest.
We did get quite a few calls from people who got the joke immediately and wanted to participate in the fun. But among the respondents was one clearly confused older woman who couldn’t understand why we were talking about being off the air when she could hear us as clearly as ever a the intersection of Winnetka and Bass Lake Road.
A friend called me at my desk a few hours later and in a make believe voice chastised me severely for “… publicly humiliating my elderly aunt! Have you no decency, sir?”
I was halfway through my apology before he ‘fessed up. The woman was not his Aunt, but he felt a little sorry for her even though he, too, laughed at her bewilderment. Now it was my turn to be mocked. The tables had been turned, and appropriately so.
All this came to mind when I saw that Alan Funt’s son Peter was at it again, shooting new episodes of the classic TV prank show, Candid Camera.
In a commentary for the New York Times, Funt confessed some trepidation at trying to fool savvy moderns. He said “I worried briefly that people are now so tech-savvy that some of our props and fake setups wouldn’t be believed. Instead, we found that the omnipresence of technology has reached a point where people will now accept almost anything”.
And really, isn’t that the lesson of the past 20 years? Virtually any crazy thing is possible. Such as:
For years I have been following the old dictum about drinking 8 glasses of water every day. I know others have moved away from it, saying no rule is iron-clad. But I enjoy the healthy feeling of being well-hydrated, so it’s no hardship for me. Also, I’ve become something of a public restroom hobbyist, so I know how to find relief just about anywhere.
And I drink just about every kind of water – from bottles, water fountains, sprinklers and the kitchen tap. I feel lucky to live in a country where I can do that without risking my health or even my life.
But I’m not so confident when it comes to food. I’m suspicious about everything and I always, always check the “use by” dates so I don’t wind up putting things in my mouth that are in the process of going bad.
I have this recurring nightmare that I’m watching myself eat a meal in a restaurant and I can see that the food that arrives at my table had been dropped on the kitchen floor just moments before. The cook stepped on it, picked it up, flopped it back down on the plate and sent it out without telling anyone.
In this nightmare, I’m a silent observer so I can’t tell myself not to eat it . I just have to watch.
Ugh.
At least I know the water is reliable. But just last week I heard a rather alarming thing – that there is a lot of water on Earth that is remarkably old – and in many cases it is even older than the Sun!
Dr. Babooner, I can’t quite stomach the idea of swallowing something that was floating untethered around the universe that many billions of years ago. I don’t know if space aliens have feet, but now whenever I take a sip of liquid I wonder who (or what) might have stepped on it or brushed up against it in the pre-solar system days and who might have swallowed (and excreted) it before me.
The very thought of it makes me shudder.
Friends tell me to stop being so weird and they say I’m overreacting. But I think the age of our water matters. Do you?
Sincerely,
Feeling A Little Parched
I told F.A.L.P. that there is no way a modern person with a lively imagination can comfortably ingest anything these days without turning off their “what if” engine. Lots of things could have happened to your water before it got to you. Much more will happen after it leaves you. The only way to maintain your sanity (and your weight) is to eat in the here and now, without supposing anything at all about where the food and water came from.
But that’s just ONE opinion. What do YOU think, Dr. Babooner?
Today’s post comes from Dr.Larry Kyle, founder and produce manager at Genway, the supermarket for genetically engineered foods.
In every life there comes a moment when you are struck by an uncomfortable truth about the work you’ve been doing.
For some, this moment came just yesterday when I realized I will never receive credit for accomplishing my mission – to develop genetically modified foods through unsupervised experimentation and then to release those foods into a trusting world!
Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!
Researchers testing dried porcini mushrooms found that three out of the fifteen pieces in the bag matched no known DNA profile!
This proved shocking to everyone because in most grocery stores people assume that someone, somewhere,knows what they are buying.
And if the grocery store operator had been aware that he was selling a previously unheard of and utterly unique product, he would have doubled the price. Obviously.
At Genway, the strange situation described above is our everyday reality. When walking up and down the aisles to peruse products like Genway’s Cobrabanana, our Fresh Living Toast, our Screaming Pumpkins, our Brussels Sprites, or our Snapping Peas, customers EXPECT to find fruits, vegetables and even animals that are well off the map of known science!
When I saw the mushroom story I instantly recognized these interlopers as stray samples of Genway’s Mock Mushrooms – fungal edibles interlaced with DNA from some of nature’s great mimicry artists – chameleons, mocking birds, the mimic octopus, the false cobra, and the Four-Eyed Butterfly Fish.
Our Mock Mushrooms grow from the ground up in a pre-dried state, and can be added to any mushroom dish when you come up just a little short of enough fungi to complete the recipe. Inherently aware of their surroundings, Genway’s Mock Mushrooms will instantly impersonate many varieties, including shiitake, frondosa, morel, chanterelle and the impossibly old and wrinkly-looking Calvin!
That last one isn’t a kind of mushroom – it’s your Uncle from Eden Prairie!
In the case of the London fungal surprise, someone must have purchased our Mock Mushrooms and then accidentally released them, perhaps during a picnic in the woods. They infiltrated a stand of existing fungi and eventually found their way into another grocery store on the other side of the globe.
I’m so proud! My glorious pretties have been released into an unsuspecting world!
But I will never get the credit I am due, unless formal charges are filed and international agricultural authorities have the power to extradite!
Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!
Trail Baboon 