Today’s guest post comes from Wally, proprietor of Wally’s Intimida – home of the Sherpa Sport Utility Vehicle.
Today is a great day to buy a new Sherpa – the largest, most impressive vehicle on the road today! Great big cars are STILL hot, in spite of what some gloomy fun-killers say about the gas guzzler being an automotive dinosaur.
Because dinosaurs are still hot too!
Recent research shows that Oviraptors, a flightless, two-legged variety of dinosaur, had all the right equipment on board to flaunt a set of spectacular tail feathers solely for the purpose of attracting a mate. Scientists lament that the fossil record doesn’t do a good job of preserving these feathers, so we will probably never know exactly what kind of sinuous tail-shaking took place on the prehistoric dance floor.
But isn’t it encouraging to know that dinosaurs weren’t all about snarling and stomping and biting the heads off of smaller animals?
In tribute, Intimida introduces the Sherpa Oviraptor edition, a mammoth SUV with a set of mechanical tail feathers that can do the very same thing the dinosaurs did – put on a flashy display to draw attention to the fact that YOU are driving a car that is absolutely ASTOUNDING!
Today’s automobiles have lost the feeling of excitement that made car owners of the 50’s and 60’s hunger for bigger and more elaborate tail fins. The Sherpa Oviraptor edition brings us back to those days of provocative, sensual display.
And a special bonus – from behind the wheel of your Sherpa, you can also deploy your feathers like a drag chute to help slow you down on a steep incline or if you simply forget that you’re expected to stop at the red lights like everybody else – as Sherpa owners are wont to do.
Come on down to Wally’s today! I’m ready and waiting to get you into a Sherpa Oviraptor with a drop-dead display that matches your eyes.
It’s a mighty big, mighty beautiful car!
What’s the most showy car you’ve ever owned? Or driven?
Today’s post comes from Congressman Loomis Beechly, representing Minnesota’s 9th District – all the water surface area in the state.
Greetings, Constituents!
I’m proud to say that this past week I was sworn in once again as a Member of the House of Representatives, along with all 435 other members.
The fact that they did not actually acknowledge me at the ceremony or list me in any of the official documents does nothing to detract from the awesome responsibility I feel as your Congressman! I know that we are in an uphill battle. I’m sure it comes as no secret to you that there are people who believe the 9th district of Minnesota is entirely made up.
Likewise, there are those who say a single congressional district composed of nothing but water surface area in a state with over 12,000 lakes and at least four major rivers is a logistical and practical impossibility. Such skeptics also claim such a jurisdiction would have virtually no full time residents.
Yes, there are voices who insist that you, I and our district are purely fanciful. This is an outrage! I’m not upset that they say we are imaginary, but I’m incensed that they believe this somehow makes us irrelevant!
And now there are similar critical voices suggesting that former Minneapolis City Council Member and current developer Steve Minn has violated standards of public behavior simply by using people that he made up in his head to attack another developer’s projects!
What are we to make of this? Are Fanciful Americans to be denied a voice, as well as their very existence?
Some of Minn’s accusers smirk at the news that his three Fancifuls (Howard Wilbur, Suzanne Sharp and Louis C. Brown) actually talked with each other through online community message boards. Why is that wrong? Are F.A.’s not permitted to collaborate? Denying the right of assembly is always one of the first acts of a tyrant!
And don’t patronize Fancifuls by lumping us together with noisy minority groups asserting their rights. There is no evidence anywhere to prove The Fanciful are a minority! We could very easily outnumber Tangible Americans – all it would take is an accurate census of the national imagination. I believe if we could correctly count the number of made-up people who reside solely on school playgrounds and in day care facilities on a normal January morning, that number would completely overwhelm the Tangible population.
We have many positive qualities. Fanciful Americans are forthright. The good ones are a great asset to our communities (Superman, Dora the Explorer). When F.A.’s are bad, they are unambiguously evil (Hannibal Lecter, Wicked Witch of the West). We prize clarity!
So don’t marginalize Fancifuls, and if you condone discrimination against us, don’t think you will be immune to the effects. Some of the most reputable Tangibles, upon closer investigation, turn out to be totally made up people (Bernie Madoff, John Edwards, Bo Beckman) who do not even realize how completely fake they are!
I, for one, am proud to be exactly who you think I am! Because without you, I am, literally, nothing.
Why do we have the Internet?
So we can know that somewhere there is a goat who takes its language cues from chickens.
But surely there is more to this than a simple story about an impressionistic young ungulate being raised by an exotic, feathered family – learning to scratch, peck, cluck, and lay an egg like his brothers and sisters. After all, it’s not all about the environment where you grow. Goats are around people all the time and yet they don’t mimic us.
At least not when they know we can hear them.
But communication does occur, with or without words.
Still, it might be nice to have an extended conversation in English.
If you could get an interview with only one animal, which one would you choose?
Seeing with considerable satisfaction the way a ticking clock got the deadbeats in the US Congress to finally pass a piece of (imperfect) legislation, I commissioned Schuyler Tyler Wyler, America’s Rhyming Poet Laureate, to write a few lines about the value of time limits.
And of course I told him I needed to have something in hand no later than 20 minutes after the challenge was issued. If he couldn’t deliver, he should just forget it, I said, knowing full well that STW never passes up a commission.
His secret? He becomes a lot less picky as the time grows short.
Many lines will man diminish,
casting shadows o’er his heart.
Like a line emblazoned “finish”
set too far from one marked “start.”
Lengthy lines can form for tickets
Timberlines sit near the tree
Don’t cross lines set up by pickets.
Don’t cross lines prefaced by “fe”.
One line always worth preserving
though he’ll never, ever ask you,
every guy thinks he’s deserving.
it’s the one that follows “mascu”.
An exciting line is “chorus”.
An archaic one is “clothes”.
Lines called “border” can be porous.
Lines with water can get froze.
There are many lines that plague us:
Lines for greeting at a wedding.
And the kind they make in Vegas.
Not for marriage, but for betting.
Tucked behind a velvet curtain
sultry lines designed for “chat”.
In a hospital for certain
please avoid a line that’s “flat”.
One line makes all writers tremble
just one line gets in their head.
Makes their noggins disassemble.
That’s a line that’s clearly “dead”.
For a deadline makes them humble.
Whether genius or a jerk.
It’s the deadline makes them crumble.
Sets them free to do their work.
When have you been assisted by an inflexible deadline?
roger millers birthday is today. he’s not around to enjoy it anymore but he left something behind for us to enjoy in his absence.
roger miller was a blip on the screen in the 60’s when his hits , dang me, do wacka doo, king of the road and you can’t roller skate in a buffalo herd were topping the charts. i enjoyed them and thought they were good songs. i gave them more credit than the equivalent guitarzan by ray stevens which sort of appealed to the same demographic.
king of the road upon inspection is a tune that offers a view of another mans shoes that is not really given enough credit for how different it was from everything else out there and if you actually went into the thoughts behind dang me and do wacka doo they show that there was a serious thought behind the semi babble top 40 pop effort of the times.
my first marriage gave me many unique memories two wonderful kids and one mother in law that insisted on knowing exactly what gift to buy for christmas and birthdays before she went out to shopping . i told her album collections were the way to go. dylan, the stones the beatles, roger miller and she chose roger miller. i already had too many dylan albums and most of the beatles so if it comes down to the stones or roger miller , roger miller won.
each album was 8 dollars and 50 was the budget so 6 was the number of roger miller albums I received . I had no idea you could get so much music form 6 albums. in addition to king of the road, do whacka do and dang me there were tunes like husbands and wives and other heartfelt balads he was incredible at writing that never made the radio and….there was an album called big river which was roger millers broadway musical i had no knowledge of at all at that point. it turned out to be a turning point for me and roger.
he spent three years writing big river. unlike all his other efforts he put time and energy into the production and it showed. he even played pap on broadway when john goodman had to leave the broadway production to take the role of dan conner on the tv series roseanne. if you haven’t heard the album recording of the musical do it. it is the best musical ever.
that fistful of roger miller albums caused a backwards biography of roger miller that informed me that while he was a kindred spirit he had a troubled history with many problems starting when his dad died during the depression in the dustbowl era of oklahoma and he and his two brothers were each shipped off to live with a different uncle.
shep wolley was another relative who taught roger to play violin and introduced him to the nashville end of showbusiness where roger got his start writing tunes for ray price and someone else on the grand ol opry and then befriended chet atkins and johnny cash and became part of the nashville scene. along the way he burned through life with ex-wives drug problems bouts with depression and kind of a death wish outlook on his career.
he was given one of those tv show in the 60’s. remember them all, the nat king cole show, ed sullivan, dean martin, red skelton, jimmy dean, judy garland, johnny cash, well they cut rogers out after the first 13 weeks, showing up for work was not a good job description for roger who did best shooting from the hip and writing songs when inspired.
while i am fortunate enough to be able to claim no depression, drugs and relationships had taken their toll and offered their challenges.
sometimes you are attracted to a guy and then find out the creative juices that he oozed were not a celebration of life but a pressure relief valve. if its in there its just gotta come out. when it does how you deal with it determines where it goes from there.
there are lots of roger miller clips out there on you tube. its like looking into steve goodman or john prine or a bag of lays potato chips once you get started its hard to stop. you guys are all fine but i may need to do some serious accessing.
name a creative artist who you would consider a kindred spirit.
One man has been arrested and another may be behind bars soon for the Christmas Eve pilfering of 100 meteorites from the Pisgah Astronomical Research Institute near Asheville, North Carolina.
Apparently, buying and selling space rocks is a big deal online.
As with major works of art by dead painters, things that are rare and unusual can command a high price. Anything that can bring in bucks is a target for the criminal element, but one has to wonder if meteorite futures are as bright as the prospects for, say, works by Picasso or Munch.
After all, if the value of a thing is defined by its scarcity, one must take into account that the Universe is full of rocks. Most of them did not come from Earth, so while meteorites might be valuable today, how impressive will they be in 50 years when your descendants can take a day trip to the moon and come home with a bag of space chunks?
Yes, any serious connoisseur of extra-planetary debris should begin building his or her collection with an eye for the long term – the very, very, very long term. Rocks that somehow landed on earth by accident are fascinating, but it would be wise to be a little more discerning.
Some sky watchers predict it won’t be long before we discover another planet showing exactly the right conditions to be a mirror image of Earth. Wouldn’t space rocks from such a place be far more valuable than a collection of mere pebbles from Mars? And what if a civilization was discovered on this planet? Wouldn’t their tools, appliances and ephemera be extremely collectible? What are a few metorites compared to getting your hands on a Pandoran fork?
And of course once the cosmic trade routes are set up, the reverse will be true as well. Your excess stuff, which you see now as worthless, will be viewed as pricey exotica on distant worlds. This, it seems to me, is the only rational argument for hanging on to all that trash in the basement – to package it up and ship it off to another civilization shortly after contact is made.
That’s why I’m collecting wine corks. Light and easy to ship, they’ll be valuable treasures on Earth II, where the amazed resident creatures will gladly part with their fortunes to own and display a souvenir of our strange world.
With what commodity are you ready to corner the inter-galactic trinket trade?
Here we are, finally, at the end of 2012. Word Press prepared a 2012 annual report for Trail Baboon. There are some interesting statistics, though I haven’t got a clue what they all mean. Click here to see the data.
Going into 2012 we were all feeling some trepidation about what was ahead, particularly with regard to the election. One year ago today, many of the baboons engaged in the artful science of making real and fantasy predictions about the coming year.
Baboons were hesitant to offer guesses about the future in the category we can only call Reality Based Predictions (R.B.P.). Several ventured (correctly) into this territory:
Obama will win the election, and the bad karma the GOP has been sending out will be returned to them.
Here’s my choice as the winner for the most accurate RBP:
But baboons seemed to be more comfortable making Fantasy Predictions (F.B.P.), such as:
The economy will turn around completely and become a steaming engine of Green Industry, recycling everything and focusing on creating energy without a carbon load.
Bubby will finally make it into the junior class (never going to happen).
Minnesota will not have a single day with a heat index over 90. (nice try)
Though there are elements of reality-based guessing in this one, I’m most impressed by the fantasy landscape. When it comes to the imagined future, we all seem to be much more comfortable (and hopeful) about our personal projections, rather than our national or global prospects.
Of course, I believe Edith is still incarcerated. Still, one has to admire the optimism in this scenario.
When it comes to making predictions for the year ahead, deciding whether we were accurate or misguided is completely beside the point. This annual exercise is a way to express hopes and fears, and in some cases to add a note of personal resolve. No bets are made and no money changes hands.
So let your minds roam – what will happen in 2013?
Should old acquaintances be forgot and never brought to mind?
Everybody I’ve talked to lately wants me to answer this question, which I find nonsensical. Since when has anyone been able to decide whether or not they will forget someone else?
My experience has been that your mind either loses track of someone or it doesn’t, and it has very little to do with how much you like them. The nastiest ones can stick with you the longest. With all the others it’s hit and miss.
Years later you might remember a forgotten person if you have a chance encounter on the street or you see their picture in a book or a magazine or a mug shot.
We really don’t have much say in the matter.
But people keep asking this “Old Acquaintance” question, usually with a drink in their hand at some late-night party, when they are getting sloppy and disgusting and the chances are good they won’t even be able to remember their new acquaintances.
Still, I get the sense that they want me to provide an answer, though I honestly have no idea what to say.
Sincerely,
B. Fuddled
I told B. that the question appears rhetorical, which means it does not require a response. In fact, this particular question and the environment in which it is typically asked is more of an invitation to have another drink – an activity which eventually leads (after a marked increase) to the cessation of talking all together in favor of simply staring into space, blankly. Perhaps his confusion about the intent of the question is really a sign that B. has been leaving the party too early.
But that’s just one opinion. What do YOU think, Dr. Babooner?
Today’s post comes from Congressman Loomis Beechly, representing Minnesota’s 9th district – all the water surface area in the state.
Greetings Constituents!
I’m in Washington, DC, where I almost never am in the days that separate Christmas from New Years. But I have to be here in case we’re called on to vote on some kind of deal to address the “fiscal cliff“, which is a silly but very effective name for a scary thing that you can’t see.
It is quite entertaining to be here for the hand-wringing and running around, the closed door discussions and the breathless predictions about what will happen if we actually do go flying off our self-made “cliff” into a canyon of despair.
The whole town is charged with a kind of tense excitement – something kind of bad is about to happen. A storm is coming in, and people are stocking up and taking cover.
It’s a blame storm. We’re going to get buried in it, and the only question left is who will be able to dig out and who will be buried?
I feel fortunate because I happen to come from a part of the country that is guilt-rich and I’ve been slogging through stubborn waves of blame since the day I was born and the doctor slapped me. My mother hauled off and punched the doctor, then she kissed me, then I cried, and she slapped me too. I had just put her through quite a lot of trouble, so I understood and forgave her immediately.
But the point is, I know how to dig out when I’m getting deluged by blame. And believe me, there’s lots on the way.
Forecasters say there will be jobs lost, investments ruined, gains rolled back and fortunes diminished. The recent glimmers of economic hope that we’ve seen will be snuffed, and economic despair will make a resurgence. That kind of massive collision of high expectations and low performance always produces a huge blame storm, and the contest now is to find out who is best prepared to weather the onslaught?
Speaking only for myself, I know I didn’t do anything wrong. You can’t blame me because I wasn’t part of the non-negotiations and as a representative of a largely overlooked district with no newspapers or media of any kind, my statements on the issue have gone largely ignored.
Not that I’ve had much to say except “It’s not my fault.”
So I don’t think the Blame Storm is going to be too terribly bad in the 9th district. Famous last words?
At least I’ll be famous!
Your loyal Representative,
Loomis Beechly
Some wishful thinking from the Congressman? I’d like to be able to say I’m never troubled when the blame starts flying, but it only takes a little bit of it to totally bog me down. How about you?
Today’s post comes from Bathtub Safety Officer Rafferty.
At ease, Civillians!
But when I say ‘at ease’, I don’t necessarily mean you should relax. We must always stay vigilant about personal safety issues, but especially so at the end of the year when time is running out on the statistic-keeping for 2012.
Don’t get me wrong. It is awful to fall down the stairs, no matter when that happens. But if you fall down the stairs during the last week of the year your calamity won’t have the same effect on the manufacturers of handrails or stair treads that it might have if you took your tumble in, say, January. Stair accessory manufacturers have already closed the books on 2012. They’ve decided if they had a good year or bad in the never-ending battle with gravity. What might be a personal disaster for you would come too late to indicate any kind of a trend in stairway safety, one way or another.
It would be like being the last soldier to get shot in a long war.
So stay safe in these final days of 2012, and I say that with full knowledge that this is a primary time for encountering extreme cold, glare ice and liberal amounts of alcohol – all of them are elements that actively work AGAINST personal safety and security. Cold, Ice and Alcohol. CIA! Spooky.
So be vigilant. Be hesitant to take any unwise risk. If someone suggests that you take the Christmas lights down from the peak of the house before New Year’s Day even though the ground and the roof are covered with ice, just say ‘no’. If the thought occurs to you that you’d like to rinse the thick layer of dust off your kitchen radio while it’s still plugged in, ask yourself if that’s smart. If a smart-aleck suggest that you lick raw cookie dough off the moving parts of your new kitchen stand mixer while it is still running, send that person away. In fact, if you think any specific activity is bound to be risky, it’s never wrong to say “wait ’til next year.”
After all, it’s just a couple of days’ delay! And then you can resolve to be totally injury free in 2013!
Yours in safety,
B.S.O. Rafferty
I think this is a safety statistic fanatic’s take on an important issue. Really, it’s as important to be careful now as it will be in January or June. But whatever reason he uses to give us a stern warning is fine with me, because I know B.S.O.R. has a need to waggle his finger at us and it keeps him healthy to be constantly alarmed at what we might do.
What potentially risky behavior will you foreswear in 2013?
Trail Baboon