highway signs

Ms. Donna rags me about the signs on our highways in Oklahoma.  The lack of signs when you exit the freeway is one problem.  You take the exit heading for a given destination but you're unfamiliar with the area.  You get to the end of the ramp where there's a stoplight and you have the opportunity to go any one of a few directions.  There's no sign anywhere telling you where you are or where the place you want to go is located.  Not even a street sign.  You just have to guess and turn around a mile or so later when you're wrong. 


She also likes to point out the signs that announce "Workers Ahead" when there are no workers anywhere around.  Sometimes there are people but they're never working.  More often there aren't any people.  And most of the time there's nothing;  no equipment or workers or non-workers or orange cones or anything.  Just the sign.


I really like the one that says "Left Lane Ends Ahead" so you change to the right lane and almost slam into the barricade before you quickly change back into the left lane to whiz on by.


I tell her that Oklahoma's not the only place with remarkable signs.  I'll never forget the sign in Philadelphia near her childhood home that says "BE AWARE OF AGGRESSIVE DRIVERS".  Heck, Oklahoma doesn't have any of that.  They don't drive aggressively, they just shoot you.


There's a sign on the highway out here by the house.  It says "Don't Run Over Our Workers". 
Below that it says "10,000 Dollar Fine".


Uh.  So.  If I'm a rich guy and need a little excitement, I can go ahead and knock one off and just write a check?


There's the sign but no workers.  No indication of any workers working there or having been there.  Maybe they have the sign up to tell you not to run over the workers who were putting up the sign.


And then I wonder.  Is it a $10,000 fine for running over one worker or a dozen of them.  I mean, if you hit one and you are still going, is it OK to go ahead and hit a few more since it won't cost anymore?  Or is it $10,00 for each worker.  And then, this is Oklahoma.  You've gotta consider, is it $10,000 for hitting a legal worker?  How much for an illegal one?  I'm sure if it's a state statute then you can hit as many as you want but if it's a federal statute then you could get life in prison for suggesting you want to run one over. 


I also wonder, if we apply my wife's shopping rule, if there are three workers out there then maybe I should run over one of them because that way I've saved $20,000.  Ms. Donna would be proud.


Highway signs should be used for the purpose of safety.  Too often they are placed somewhere that they aren't needed.  Maybe there's going to be something happening in the future or maybe there was something happening in the past and maybe they plan to take them down soon.  But they're out there right now either confusing people or mis-informing people.  Whatever, because of the stupidity of the placement and wording of many signs, people are to the point now where they ignore the signs.  And that's not a good thing.

Gimme Wednesday

OK, so, here it is, Christmas time.
Everyone's stressing, everyone's spending and rushing and wishing and hinting.  Smiles are happening and people are making it happy once again.  It's wonderful.  I really love Christmas time because I have no kids.  Oh my God, what a mess things would be if kids were involved.  Couldn't do it. 


I went to the mall.  I love the mall for the holidays.  Lots of rushers.  Lots of happy people among all the rats and jerks.  Little kids, even, singing carols just for you and me. 


I saw Santa there at the mall.  I waited in line and smiled at the nasty-face-tossing young mothers.  When it was my turn I gently sat down on the old man's fragile legs and ignored the grimace underneath his cheap beard.  And I told him what it is want most for Christmas. 


I told him that, when he lands that sleigh on top of my little house and while those reindeer crap and stomp on my roof, I want him to somehow make it down through my decorative fireplace and bring me the gift I've always wanted. 


I want Wednesday.


People want cars and ponies and dolls and teeth and jewels but all I want is Wednesday.  I don't give a hoot for Monday because, I mean good grief, who the hell wants Monday.  Tuesday is not as crappy as Monday but it's a nothing day anyway.  Thursday is heading toward the weekend and nobody gets really excited about producing much there.  Friday is totally out because everybody is already weekended out so it's generally worthless.  Weekends aren't worth having for my purpose. 


I want Wednesday.


I want everything that is produced on Wednesday anywhere and everywhere they have it.  If it's Mittwach I want the Euros.  If it's Yom revee-ee they can send me shekels.  Produce something on Wednesday in Mexico and send me those pesos. 


Wednesday will be mine from then on.  The Wednesday following Christmas will be my own.  And every Wednesday after that until I get tired of it.  Make some wine on Wednesday, it's mine.  Cut some grain, clean some herb, brew some beer, send it to me.  Everyone working on Wednesday will be working for me.  They'll gather all the stuff and all the monies and all the various things that I'll reap from my Wednesdays and they'll store it all just for me.


First thing I'll do about Wednesdays is change the damnit spelling of it.  How many people do you know say "Wed Nes Day"? 
It's NOT wed nes day.
It's Wensday.
We'll change the name to Wensday.  This is your first hint.  Become a calendar corrector as soon as you can swing it.  Big money in it soon. 


I'm unsure if Santa was cool with my idea or not.  He was busy talking to the paramedics.  The children were running around crying and the ladies were doing the same thing ladies have been doing around me all my life.  They were trying to get away.


I'll remember them when I get Wednesdays.  I'll get back at those who don't like me.  I'll get back at them on Wednesdays.  I just won't let them in.  You'll have to know the password.  Be on the list.  Be 'cool'.  Otherwise you can just forget Wednesdays.  They're going to be mine.


 

natural socialization

Our dogs don't always hang out together.  Sometimes a small group goes to the south pasture for a while or maybe a couple go for a ride, or such.  When a dog or two returns from being away all the others rush to sniff and touch noses and bump together.  One very common thing that all dogs do is sniff butt.


Sniffing butt for dogs is not just a - 'oooh, let's see how your butt smells'.  No, it's richly complicated.  Butt sniffing is a way for the sniffer find out if the sniffee is happy or stressed or agitated.  Butt sniffing is the way for dogs to not only find out the general mood of the sniffee, but it's also a general way to find out where the sniffee's been and pretty much what they've been doing. 


Stop and think about dog noses.  They're at least 3 times the size of most human noses and they're chock full of lots of strong nose tools that are used to enhance odor collection body parts by huge degrees over the average weak and less smelly human nose.  So when a dog uses its nose, it's using a supremely sophisticated tool.  Dogs are superheroes, if you will, with extreme nose power. So when they stick their nose up into another's butt they can determine the mood of the butt, what type of terrain that butt has traversed lately, what type of food's been pooped and who knows how many other tidbits of buttly info that's available. 


Dogs have such an advantage over humans in the arena of social engagement.  You'd think that they can't really communicate since they can't talk or text or tweet.  But you'd be very wrong.  They're communication skills are far in advance of humans because they can simply trot up to a friendly dog and take a quick sniff and answer all and any questions that we would have spent long minutes attempting to communicate over. 


Wouldn't it be great if we could communicate like that?  Just imagine, show up for a meeting at work and have no wonder if the boss is happy or angry.  You can find out with just one quick sniff.  Well shoot, you wouldn't even have to sniff the boss, you could take a quick whiff of the secretary's butt and know what to expect.  You could convey the mood that you have right now, to all the other people in the meeting if you just stand there sipping coffee while they take turns bending over and sticking their noses into your exit hoses.


How wonderful!  The teens of today could finally walk down the street and see the street.  They could take their eyes out of the cell phone and put them where they belong; on each other's butts.  That's the way we used to do it.  Well no, we didn't actually stop and sniff butts but back in high school I myself was very interested in most of the young lady's butts. 


How simple it would be for the singles crowd when you think about it.  See a pretty gal walking down the street and all you have to do is trot over and smell her butt.  You'd know in an instant if she was interested or not.  Go to the local bar and do the same.  Why shoot, they'd probably build bars expressly for that purpose.  Maybe you could enter the nightclub and walk down an aisle that conveniently takes you UNDER the seated personnel.  That way you could just turn your head up and follow your nose.  You could find out who is lonely, who is ready to party and who to leave alone. 


Take a lesson from my dogs.  Learn to use that nose.  Why, we could change the world.  Who knows what those noses could know.

gross

Dogs are gross.  Really gross. 


Of course we all know that they eat cat poop and lick their own exit holes and bugs and anything else that smells bad.  I'm never surprised when I see one of our dogs making a horrid scene of themselves but something happened yesterday afternoon that I just felt the need to write down. 


Hershey The Destroyer is a pretty young mini-bulldog or something.  We don't really know what kind of dogling she is because we don't know where she came from.  One day she appeared.  Walking down the driveway. And she never left. 


Well Hershey's an adventurer.  I was sitting out in the south yard with her and Butty and Gertie.  Hershey pranced over to a weed patch and sniffed down and quickly pulled up a fresh earthworm.  Right out of the ground, as they do.  She likes the fresh ones.  Jake likes worms but they really need to be aged.  They need to be crispy.  I guess you could guess that Hershey is sort of a health nut as far as earthworms go.  Hershey trotted over by herself and tossed the worm around like a puppy does and then she dropped it and carefully peed on it. 


Gertie came over and saw what was going on and, you know dogs, she too peed on the worm. 


Butty saw the action and promptly peed on the worm.


Hershey then found the worm once again.  She carried over by me and sat down. 
And she ate it.


Dogs are gross.  Really gross.

syrians

They’re talking about ‘bringing’ 10,000 Syrian refugees from the Middle East into the U.S.  Many of our governors have complained. They insist that they will not accept any Syrian refugees.  Other governors say they will accept, but not condone the action.  We, as a nation, aren’t against Syrians and we’re not against other people from other countries coming to our land.  The more the merrier, actually.  We love McDonald’s.  We hate mowing the lawn.  We shop at convenience stores.  We love immigrants.  But we don’t love the fear that some of those Syrians might (and probably are) coming here to blow things up. 

The government (Obama and friends) have promised to ‘vet’ these immigrants so well that they’ll never hurt anyone.  How can they say that they’re letting in 10,000 people – but only good ones – when they haven’t vetted anyone yet.  You know what will happen?  The same thing as any other government job.  People who get paid for being lazy and non-competitive will get an assignment.  They’ll have a quota.  They’ll vet a bunch of people correctly and then realize they’d better step up the pace because the boss wants them to meet an ill-defined quota.  They’ll start fudging, faking and governmenting. 

“What’s in that backpack?” 

“Nothing sir.  Just some Syrian refugee keepsakes.  Nothing like bombs or guns or knives.” 

“OK.  Move on and be quick about it, you’re number 7,655.”

So why not work out a deal?  Many of our governors don’t want them and many of our rulers do.  We have an abundance of refugee/immigrants already so why don’t we work up some kind of trade?  These people aren’t coming here because they love the U.S.A. You can tell that because when they get here they protest the country and gather in separate, non U.S. communities and wave their own flags and watch their own T.V. stations. 

They’re here for the food.  They’re here for the free health care.  They probably don’t care where they go as long as some country is fool enough to support them. 

So there you go.  Send them to Syria.  Syria has ISIS.  ISIS gives free food to its citizens.  ISIS gives free health care too.  We could take in the 10,000 Syrians and send them 10,000 illegal immigrants.  Hell, we could sweeten the deal with a couple of gangs that they could use at the front lines.

Whey just let everybody in that wants in?  We got ours, now let them go find theirs somewhere else.  We need to consider the time and resources involved in vetting 10,000 immigrants.  This would cost billions and take twenty years and require two or three new government agencies.  What the hell, why don’t we make them come in through Texas like everyone else? 

Sorry.  I try not to talk about politics.  Makes me aggravated.

 

 

honesty

Sometimes we need to air out the room.  Bring some honesty to the fore.  Sometimes it's better to disclose the clouded issues than it is to keep them silent and hidden.


I'm talking of course, about farting. 


Other people farting is uncomfortable and bothersome.  It's a pain in the ass.  I just got back from the Y and am remembering the lingering aroma of dozens of people who eat healthy foods (fresh, raw vegetables, fiber, beans) and then exert their insides enough to squeeze out the air.  There's always a layer of strange smell at the Y.


I don't like that smell and I don't know why. 


Don't know why? You may say.  If you didn't say that then this wouldn't be worth writing so I'll assume you say what I think you may say.  Thank you.


Don't know why, I say, because I love my farting.  So long as it's a clean, dry, efficient one.  Uh. No, I like the bad ones too.
My own farts always seem to be  associated with good feelings.  Release of the demons inside.  Cleaning out the bad air.  Sort of like wringing out the rag.


But that's not all.  The honesty part starts now.  I like the smell of my own farts.  Whenever I fart, no matter where I am or what I'm doing, I wait for that drifting smell.  And I like it. 
You heard it here.
I like to smell my own farts.


I don't know why that is.  Maybe it's something like conditioning.  Something like, when you release the demons and you feel better, that's when you smell the smell.  And maybe over the decades you learn to associate that smell with feeling good.  I don't know,maybethat's what's going on.  But I wonder.  Because if that were the case then I should like all farts, but I don't.  I hate the smell of other people's farts.  Even in the throes of passion, I do lose a little when my partner lets one go.  Now that could be due to my age-old belief  (when I was in elementary school) that girls didn't fart.  And whoa, heck-no, girls never shit.  Not pretty ones anyway.  I was disgusted to find out the truth about that.  If I were the culprit then it wouldn't bother me at all. 


So I want to know; do others like their own farts?  Or am I just different in that way.  I'm guessing that if you ask around, most people won't admit it.  So then if you took a survey you couldn't believe it and such a thing could be a waste of time.


But if you could do a reliable survey, and you could prove that most people (such as is my suspicion) do like to smell their own farts, well there you go.  A multi-million dollar industry just waiting to blow its effects out into the world. 


I could start a business.  Finance this pennyless retirement that I'm experiencing here.  First of all I'd need to create some sort of machine or thing or something.  It would have to be a thing where a person could save up their farts.  Like donating blood or something.  I could locate little kiosks around town in convenient places where people, when overloaded with personal poopy smells, could stop by and deposit some fresh farts.  I could save these smells and label them and sort them into some sort of flatulationary database and set them up for future retrieval. 


Later on.  When the need arises.  Like on a lonely Saturday night or a long-distance drive or something.  The people could open up a box of package-pooty and release their very own satisfying fart smell.
I like it.  Watch for my IPO.


A blast of business perfectly perched for the sweet smell of success.

Simple Was and Is No More

It was the only phone company in town but they tried not to act like it. You went to McDonald's and ordered a cheeseburger and fries and you left.  You turned on the T.V. and sat down to watch.


Where did it all go?


Burger?
Yes.
Turkey?  Beef?  Angus?  Natural? 
What?  Just gimme a burger. 


Telephone?  Throw the old thing against the wall.  Stomp on it.  Flush it.  It still worked.  Spin the dial or push some buttons and it called your friends and family just perfectly.  Sure you had to stand within 3 feet and there was no way you could get any color than black or pink but did you really care?  Did you even think about it?  Now you have to shop and decide and compare for days just to get a new phone.  And then you have to pay waaaay too much for years.  If you drop it, it's doomed.  You have to walk around with unsightly cracks until the day you find a lot more money.


The T.V?  Used to be that you hit a button and it came on.  You had 3 and a half channels (the UHF half).  No big deal. Now we have to turn the T.V. on and then turn it on again.  You can't just turn it on anymore, you have to punch this button and then that button.  You can't punch that button and then this one because it won't work.  It has to be this button and then that one.  Then you start looking for a good show.  Takes a full minute or two to realize that, even though you have over a hundred channels, you end up with only about 3 and a half channels that you can stand to watch.


We have a boat that has a radio.  We couldn't figure out how to make the old radio work because it acted like it was possessed.  We bought a new radio.  It too seems possessed.  I actually had to read the damnit book to see how to turn the radio on.  You have to push the knob and when the display lights up you need to turn the knob to some setting.  Then you push the knob again when the setting displays the correct menu selection to be used to turn the music on.  It doesn't say "Turn the music on"   and it doesn't even say "ON".  It says something that wouldn't make sense unless you read the book.  Why can't we just hit a button and turn something on.


Ms. Donna is about to quit the world   She sadly complained the other night, that she feels like the only person in the world who can't make electronic things work.  I told her that many have the same challenges.  It's a damn demanding world. 


The U.S.A. is obsessed with giving us so many possible features that we get confused and frustrated and pissed off when we try to buy or use anything anymore.  I've thought about moving to Russia.  Go into a bread store in the U.S. and what do you see?  Bread.  Bread, bread, bread.  Everywhere there's bread.  There's Italian bread and there's cheese bread and there's apple bread and there's home-made bread and there's cinnamon bread and there's frosted bread and white and dark and rye and 100%fiber and 100% grain and 100% wheat and my gawd, there's bread.  How do you decide what the heck to do?  They often actually have a bread advisor to help you keep from going mad trying to decide.
Go to a bread store in Russia, Hah.
"Bread. One loaf.  Brown.  Move now.  Go 'way."


That's the way to do it.
Don't let people decide.  Just give them what you want, not what they want.  Stop ruining their lives.  Stop complicating things. 


Politicians have figured that part of the world out for us lately.  The last few years we have discovered that there is no need to vote for our favorite heroes anymore.  Considering the people who have been running for president in the past elections, what you have to do now is vote for the least stupid one in the field.  You don't vote FOR anyone anymore.  You vote, instead, AGAINST the most stupid one.


Maybe we should let them run our lives.  Oh wait.  They do. 
Well crap.  I guess there's nothing else to say then.  It's all been decided for us.  Just give the people so much stuff to decide on that they'll never notice the total stupidity of their leadership.  Confuse them and they will come.  Mess with the masses, who cares if they think we're all asses. 


Uh.  sorry.  I should get back to my nap.