Next time on Cats Who Hoard

"Yeah, I know it's kind of out of control, but when I see something like this old rug I think, wow, I could sharpen my claws on that till they wore down to stubs and there'd still be some left. The table's a little big, sure, but it keeps the rain off me, and on sunny days I can sit on top and see forever.

"Of course, I'm always taking in stray humans, too. I just feel so sorry for them. They can't fend for themselves in the wild . . . "

When Santa brings you lemons . . .

. . .well, I don't know -- stuff your Christmas turkey with them?

Don't ask Santa, he's not feeling very jolly as he makes the lemon run this year.

Note to spammers who want to sell me a diploma

I've already got one!

From my old friends at Dover -- but this time I actually bought the book. (For $2 at a charity sale, but still.)

Speaking of contradictions . . .

"Raise a reader", the front page tells us, on a paper full of stuff you don't want your kid to read, from the fairly mild line "Raw food seduction" to the article about the prostitution laws being struck down, complete with picture of a rejoicing woman the caption ID's as a "dominatrix".

He's talking about environmentalism, but it fits just as well with predicting the end of the world.

We really should be humble. And cautious.
But how can a humble and cautious man say we are "past the 59th minute"?

-- Dan Gardner

25 Words or Less

It wasn't the flu, Mrs. Shady Nook. It wasn't a strike, Mrs. Mud Creek. It wasn't even a vacation. It was just a breathing spell. We can't say funny things all the time. We are not the four Marx brothers. We are just another well that ran dry.

-- Evelyn Ryan, aka the Prize Winner of Defiance, Ohio


Another memoir which, like My Life in France, shows that Fifties housewives had more options than we tend to think, especially if they were a little talented.

And resourceful. Mrs. Ryan couldn't afford to buy enough Dr. Pepper to get all the bottle caps she needed for clues to the contest answer, so she sent her kids out to pick up the caps around all the vending machines in town.

The part left to the expert -- Mom -- was coming up with the last line to an ad jingle.

Today, Dr. Pepper's still running contests, but they're nowhere near so artistic. You merely have to decode the yellow-on-yellow raised numbers on the cap, go online and key them into the box, figure out what you did wrong when it says that's not a valid number . . . It's still demanding, just not in a good way.

Grande Dame

I once dreamt that I knew why Julia Child had talked the way she did, but when I woke up, I couldn't remember. While I read My Life in France, I half hoped she'd explain, but no luck. And in the end it didn't matter. She was what she was.

Viewers thought she was drunk -- she was really just big and awkward. (Too big to join the service during WWII. If only I'd been able to pull that off 40 years later.) And she was fond of adding a dash of something to her cooking. I remember one show where she said, "You can add a little cognac if you like . . . and if you don't like . . . well . . ." It was one of the apparently many occasions when she couldn't think of anything nice to say, so she didn't say anything, just swept on to the next bit of fun.

It was all fun for her, as she often says. She seems to have been able to find enjoyment in all sorts of ordinary things. Here's how she describes one good time:

One December Sunday, the three of us drove out to the Fontainebleau forest. The cloudy gray sky broke open and turned blue, the air was vigorously cool, and the sun shone brightly.

She makes you wish you'd been there -- and yet, it was just a hike on a winter day that started out cloudy and turned sunny. It's the sort of thing I've done myself a few times, but somehow I didn't see it with that same -- okay, cliché alert -- joie de vivre.

And now that I've used French, I'll confess to one of the guilty pleasures of this book -- Julia Child uses lots of  French and hardly translates any of it. Gave me a nice, smug, in-the-know feeling . . . connaissance?

"Usually one's cooking is better than one thinks it is."

Words of wisdom from Julia Child's My Life in France.

I don't believe in twisting yourself into knots of excuses and explanations over the food you make. When one's hostess starts in with self-deprecations such as "Oh, I don't know how to cook . . ." . . . it is so dreadful to have to reassure her that everything is delicious and fine, whether it is or not.

From the good old days

When children smiled cheerfully all the time . . .

. . . and boys and girls looked so different from each other.

(from the past via Dover)

Note to spammers who write "i wana know mroe about you"

1. I use correct spelling and capitalization.
2. I don't open spam.

What a blogger gets for deciding not to post

So I announce I'm not going to update my ESL news blog tomorrow, since there's not going to be any time either this evening or tomorrow morning when I could fit it in. And what happens? Into my inbox comes a load of FBI stories that would've been great to blog about: Impersonating an FBI agent!  Fake anthrax, the joke that never gets old! The Where's Waldo Bandit menaces the town of Tualatin! Lasering aircraft!

And they'll be a little past it by Monday. Oh well.

Irregularly scheduled blogging

Yes, I'm still here. I've just been fighting a nasty infection and taking on too many extra responsibilities, that's all. Gotta do something about that can-do attitude . . .

The Stuff Store: Profile of a Home Based Business

"They're dressed to kill and looking fantastic . . . "

Tracy's gone for rubber and plastic
Nicola's is a bit of elastic
It's under a heck of a strain.

-- Victoria Wood

Images from Dover

Someone thought this was photoshopped

Claimed they would've heard if asteroids had hit Jupiter. Actually, NASA says, it goes on all the time just fine without us.

Amen-Alleluia

Restauratrice Melissa Fox-Revett (emphasis mine):

Facing a dwindling and aging populace, this church had made a business decision to reach out to families -- to endure a toddler's occasional outburst in order to ensure the church's very survival. Restaurants are no different in this regard.

Nor are shopping malls, supermarkets, public transit . . . maybe even seniors' centres.

I have so many memories of my children's public outbursts that it may not really be fair for me to call them "occasional", but that's another story -- one I hope to get paid for.

Thoughts on Toy Story 3, in no particular order

• Some upscale daycare -- freestanding building, reception desk, janitorial service, vending machine in the staff room. However . . .
  
• They seem to have blown all their money on facilities, rather than hire staff who knew enough not to let toddlers play with things that fit up their noses.
• Washing off the residue of -- well, no spoilers -- would take a lot more than a hosedown with cold water.
• I thought at first that The Return of Lotso would be a good Toy Story 4-- but now I think his reappearance, if any, would be better as a short. That is, if anyone actually wants to see any more of him.

Toy Story 3

Poster
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A new year is coming, though not for us

Even so, I came up with a loaf of challah yesterday and wrote it up for Holidays Helper.

If this brings a lot of outraged comments from people who are actually Jewish, I'll be glad of the attention.

You'd think they could track him down through the cab

I posted an ESL news story today, just to get the hang of it again.

When I read the subject line on the FBI press release -- Man Robs Bank, Then Takes Taxicab -- I thought it was going to be a "stupid criminal" story where the guy got caught right away. But they're still looking for him, offering $5000 for info.

The trouble with thrift

Also what I get for staying to clean up after the BBQ:

Cold baked potatoes.

I have so many cold baked potatoes I'm afraid to count them. I used up a few as hash browns yesterday, then got down to business this afternoon, putting 10 of them in a casserole with cream cheese and sour cream that I had to go out and buy, then freezing that and making a whole other potato dish for dinner.

CBP's do not mash nicely like freshly cooked potatoes. You have to grate them -- or purée them, in which case you should get them well started before you throw in anything you want to blend with them.

They need lots of cheese, sour cream, fat for frying, and probably other stuff I haven't yet thought of.

Too bad it's not cool enough for potato soup. By this time next week, that may not stop me.

"If I could put that much stuff away in this much space, my own house would look a lot different"

As I said last night in the school kitchen, after the BBQ wound down.

Create your own video slideshow at animoto.com.

The Upside of Hoarding

Take enough random photos of boring everyday objects, keep them long enough, and eventually a story will come along that goes perfectly with one of them. Or at least part of one of them.

It happened again today.

Dirt heap + lantern = ?

While casting a cold eye at the growing Eat Pray Love industry, Megan Daum complains:

these consumer goods tend to run the way of colorful paper lanterns you think will transform your yard instantly from a dirt heap into a Balinese paradise but fall apart when you attempt to remove them from the box (not that I tried this).

No, of course not! Just like we never thought we could transform our little bit of urban wilderness into an orderly haven by adding random bits of outdoor furniture that other people were tired of. Or that the grass under the glass table would stay nice and short and manicured. Or that the vine trailing gracefully over the unpainted arbour would draw all attention away from the about-to-collapse garage.

And I never even thought of paper lanterns! Really! They'd never hold up in the rain, even if they did make it to the backyard.

Why I need to get going on my photos earlier in the day while there's still some natural light

Glare, glare, glare, glare -- and Siamese cats sitting in front of windows.

The closest we come is maple leaf cookies in the park on Canada Day

There's an archnemesis for every superhero, and in Confessions of Super Mom it's the president of a company that makes patriotic junk food:

• Patriot Pops
• Democracy Drops
• Liberty Lemonade popsicles
• Betsy-Ross-a-Roni

What would be the equivalents in this mighty queendom?

Parliamentary Pops? Dominion Drops? Empire Loyalty Lemonade? Sir John A. -- no, his last name is pretty thoroughly taken.

Paper Fusion

Jewish Holiday Origami .

From Dover.

"To the poor, disillusioned person who lost their bag of . . . "

Here. Scroll down to "FOUND".

Reminds me of the time I wrote to the community paper to say what a sign of maturity it was to play chicken.

Cultural sidelines revisited

Signs that a place has been "culturally sidelined":

• It's home to the World's Largest [fill in the blank]
• Reporters from city newspapers occasionally visit and write about something silly they heard in a coffee shop
• Local stores get their revenge by charging $8 for a copy of the New York Times
• There are jokes contrasting it to yogurt (yogurt has culture!)
  
  
  

I know nothing about tennis, but . . .

. . . that didn't stop me from entering The New Yorker tennis cartoon contest. Especially when I saw I could put the Devil in.

Have a look.

Stop me if you've heard this one

But first, check out these clothes.

Okay. A college boy comes home one weekend wearing a trendy outfit (which I will not attempt to describe).

The neighbour, Major Smith, says, "Ah, Willie, you look just like your father used to when he came home from college."

Then the father comes home and says, "Willie, you look like a damn fool."

"I know, Dad. Major Smith just said so."

ETA: This is from a jokebook at gutenberg -- I'm not going to track down the exact file, but I thought I should give credit, even though it's public domain.

Bullets over Champagne

Took a few photos for a post about this guy.

Further note to spammers

No, I will not look at your CV. But I have a suggestion: Why don't you try for Kanye West's old job? Or Tiger Woods'? You keep telling me they've died.

Scroll down for a new post

It's way down there because I started drafting it before I wrote any of the last three.

"Culturally sidelined"

"If only I had a Globe and Mail subscription to cancel," says Bronwen Eyre.

One of their columnists " intimates that bad manners exist only in the West" because, he claims, his waitress in Banff somewhat graphically begged the indulgence of a washroom break.

Yet:

Many famous, creative people hail from, and love, culturally sidelined places. The Bronte sisters cherished the isolated Yorkshire moors; American novelist Philip Roth is deeply connected to "pastoral" New Jersey, where he grew up . . .

"Culturally sidelined places" -- that cries out for a Top Ten Signs list.

Wanted for armed robbery -- and probably some kind of environmental award

This guy stole "an undisclosed amount of cash" from a bank at gunpoint, then made his getaway . . . on a bike.

He was wearing a green shirt. How symbolic.

Eco-friendliness aside, anyone who can get anywhere quickly on a bike in Texas in August is either really fit or really desperate.

The not-lunatic-enough fringe

Professionally, I blog the award-winning jokes at the Edinburgh Fringe.

My sparetime blog here gets a couple of the worst:

Emo Phillips "I like to play chess with bald men in the park although it's hard to find 32 of them."

Bec Hill "Some of my best friends are vegan. They were going to come today but they didn't have the energy to climb up the stairs."

Confessions of a non-Jackie

So, unlike the rest of the female population born in 1962, I was named after plain, dumpy Lady Bird, not tall, glamorous Jacqueline.

-- Melanie Lynne Hauser, Confessions of Super Mom

Good book if you like the idea of a woman who can clean with the power of 10,000 Swiffers -- and her kids never notice. Who pins criminals down with her Merciless Gaze, but gets pushed around by the president of the PTA. Who works hard at bringing down the local evil empire, and at checking groceries at Marvel Fine Foods.

But I've got a review of it coming out soon and don't want to say much more -- except that the passage above made me think, because I was (full disclosure) born in 1962. Not only was I not named Jacqueline (I was named after that one of my grandmothers whose name couldn't be rendered as Peggy), I remember only a couple of Jackies from my classes in school.

Oh well -- if you presuppose a world where superheroes can exist, to the point of the Justice League's having its own time share resort, a little exaggeration is nothing.

Headache. Scheduling. Arghh. Sorry.

Back when able.

These two could be another Peppermint Patty and Marcie

1. Stop
2. calling
3. me Mikey!
   

Notes to spammers

1. No, I do not wish to join the heartbreakers' club.
2. There is an "f" in "shaft" and anyway, it's not the word you're looking for.
3. I'm glad to hear you accept Codeine as well as Visa; however, though I do happen to have some expired codeine in the cupboard, I don't think I want to trade it for anything you're selling.
4. Stop telling me you have pictures of my wife. I have no wife, and it would be illegal for me to get one -- even here in Canada.
5. 81% off? That's just weird.
   

Not last night but the night before . . .

My husband (breaking in after several minutes): I'm sorry, we don't give to charities that solicit over the phone.
Fundraising Guy: Then how are we supposed to do it?
My husband: It's called the mail. (Hangs up.)

Last night, Fundraising Guy or possibly his brother called back, just at six PM, as the chicken began to burn and the rice boiled over, and I answered anyway, thinking it was one of the family calling in to say someone else wasn't there to meet him.

After I figured out Fundraising Guy was not, in fact, anyone I knew, I told him I couldn't talk, it was too crazy.

Fundraising Guy: Listen, I just want to get the call over with. I don't care how you do it --
Me: LATER! (Hanging up.)


Where do charities get these people, and why don't they send them back there? Do they know what they're doing to their reputations?

Non-donor A: The worst is Sunshine and Santa Claus. Their guy screamed at me, "I'm not doing this for my health, ya know!"
Non-donor B: Think that's bad? The Ittle Lambs Foundation guy told me he was my nephew and he was stranded in Ulan Bator without any money. Then he said, "April fool! How many dozen units do you want to donate?" And it was October.

Deep questions

Why did I enjoy Shirley more than any of the modern books I tried to read just after it? Why wasn't I bothered about Charlotte Brontë's overuse of coincidence, her ambivalence about her Irish background (which I share with her), or her habit of pairing off her characters with their first cousins?

Oh, I don't know, maybe because it had likeable though flawed characters, and I wanted to see how the story ended. (I'd expected more of a death rate -- and it's said Charlotte Brontë may have originally planned more, but then three of her siblings died while she was writing the book, and she'd had enough.)

More Brontë stuff -- different sister

Good lines from *Shirley* , by Charlotte Brontë

To avoid excitement was one of Miss Mann's aims in
life. She had been composing herself ever since she came down in the
morning, and had just attained a certain lethargic state of tranquillity
when the visitor's knock at the door startled her, and undid her day's
work.


Had he not expressed
disdain of everything in Yorkshire? What more conclusive proof could be
given that he was better than anything there?


"Yorke, if I got off horseback and
laid myself down across the road, would you have the goodness to gallop
over me, backwards and forwards, about twenty times?"
"Wi' all the pleasure in life, if there were no such thing as a
coroner's inquest."


"Improving a husband! No. I shall insist upon my husband improving me, or
else we part."

"God knows it is needed!"

In the interests of accuracy

I'm told it may not have been the faulty mountain we were on.

Don't want to be one of those bloggers who habitually stretch a point because they figure no one's going to catch them out.

The next thing you know . . .

MacKay will be composing a Pledge of Allegiance. Or learning the words to O Canada. Or giving orders that soldier's coffins are to be draped with Canadian flags . . . oh, wait . . .

The last word on holiday reading

I took four books with me on holiday, and none of them except The War Against Boys really lived up to expectations. But I had a postmodern pleasure to look forward to: The online reviews by people who felt the same way. When I read one ending in "If you live in Chicago, you can come pick up my copy, I don't want it", it was almost like having the last word.

The mountain's fault

Taken from a mountain with a fault line 16 centimetres wide, the guy at the boat rental place told us cheerfully, nine more than last year. Sometime in the next 20 years, he said, it's expected to fall into the lake and cause a tsunami.

We scrambled up and down the mountain, twice, and came home to headlines about a huge mudslide at Mount Meager.

"Do I have to do everything myself?"

Victoriana Strikes Back

In C.S. Lewis' Pilgrim's Regress, the hero finds himself in a "laboratory" that really seems to be a bar with perpetual open mike, listening to a middle-aged woman dressed as a child playing a toy harp and singing a "neo-romantic" song. Then:

"I hope you liked it," said Gus to John.
"Well," began John doubtfully, for he hardly knew what to say: but he got no further, for at that moment he had a very great surprise. Victoriana . . . walked up to him and slapped him in the face twice, as hard as she could . . .
"You may persecute me as much as you like," said Victoriana to John. "No doubt to see me thus with my back to the wall, wakes the hunting lust in you. You will always follow the cry of the majority. But I will fight to the end. So there," and she began to cry.
"I am extremely sorry," said John. "But --"
"And I know it was a good song," sobbed Victoriana, "because all great singers are persecuted in their lifetime -- and I'm per-persecuted -- and therefore I must be a great singer."

Poor Victoriana, stuck for all time in what Lewis calls the Silly Twenties, has no Human Rights Commission to run to, where she can have John up for "creating a poisoned atmosphere" and "exposing her to hatred and contempt" just because she's no good at what she does.

BTW, here's why I was trying to write with ketchup

This post -- you can see I caught on eventually.

Have to admit . . .

I know I own this Awful Library Book.

What do I have to say for myself? Well, I bought it secondhand, and I've never let it tempt me to do anything more than a trim. On myself.

And it does contain some very good advice: Never cut your hair when you're angry.

It was a blur

My attempts to get a decent photo of a cheap ring (to go with the story of the man who says the cops lost his expensive one when he spent the night in jail).

Much more luck with this:

Ketchup was wasted in the taking of this photograph

Never mind why for the moment, but today I figured I needed a photo of a message written in ketchup on a countertop to go with an assigned post of mine.

I learned that ketchup writing is much easier with one of those tiny fast-food packs than it is with a squeeze bottle. Who would've guessed?

This is the best I could do with the bottle.

Quick Takes

• I, too, was "sickly pale before it was cool".
• "Don't send your husband to the grocery store" says the link that took me to this -- but I say the lesson is "Don't number your grocery list".
• I'm afraid to look, but I think I own a copy of this book. I paid about $2 for it and have never used it.
  
• I know it's thecomedynetwork DOT C A -- but do they have to sort their video clips in order of how many times they mention Canada? I was perfectly happy with the most recent at the top.
• Dressed in the dark? Big deal. I do my hair in the dark.
  

Everybody loves Olga -- Olga Semyonovna -- Olenka

The heroine and title character of Chekhov's short story The Darling is introduced as Olenka. Soon, someone addresses her as Olga Semyonovna. (Olga, daughter of Semyon.)And we're off to a world boggling to a Westerner, where a character called Kostya makes a remark and another character says, "I agree, Konstantin Ivanych."

After Olenka, we meet a Mr. Kukin. Not that he's ever called Mr. Kukin -- his diminutive of choice is Vanichka, and we learn belatedly that his formal name is Ivan Petrovich. (Peter's Ivan.)

Next comes Vasily Andreich Pustovalov, affectionately known as Vasichka. No need for confusion, he's a whole one letter away from Vanichka.

Finally, we meet Vladimir Platonych Smirnin -- Volodochka. Well, maybe confusion is what's intended. All the V's can't be an accident.

Volodochka has a little boy called Sasha. Or sometimes Sashenka. Anyway, the story ends before he's old enough to be called -- let's see -- Aleksandr Vladimirovich. Otherwise, he probably would've been the first of a generation whose diminutives all began with S (Stiva, Seryosha . . .)

It seems you form these diminutives by taking the accented syllable of the first name and adding an ending, preferably with "ka" or "sha" or "chka". It doesn't have to have anything in common with the original name except that one syllable.

Of course, the diminutives are only for use by family and close friends. Most people call each other politely by full first name and patronymic.

If it's too much for you, stick to the stories about soldiers -- they all call each other by their last names.

Portrait of Anton Pavlovich Chekhov, 1898

Giclee Print

Braz, Osip...


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The better part of that second word on the Victoria Cross

I was going to update this little public domain story for a GC post, then decided it might be too inflammatory coming from outside the States. Here in Efisga, it's different.

A congressman from Missouri tells an Englishman: "The whole trouble is that we Americans need a damn good licking."

"Yes, you do," says the Englishman, pleased -- for a moment, because the congressman goes on:

"But there ain't no one can do it."

Maryland Chicken: One Chicken Dish You Won't Find at KFC

You could call it Maryland Semi-Fried Chicken.

It's a recipe I'd known about for years but never tried, not because it was complicated but because it was so simple I was afraid it would taste boring. No spices, not even any salt or pepper, just chicken dipped in milk, coated in flour, browned in bacon drippings, and baked till it's cooked through. That's it.

But it was inexplicably popular at our house.

Spare photo

. . . from a few taken to illustrate a GC post called "McChrystal the Rock Star". Second career, as they call it.

Decided not to use this shot because I wasn't sure it was clear enough that the object was a guitar.


Not that it is, actually -- it's a Guitar Hero controller.

And since I've brought up this controversy, I should comment on it somehow. Well, I've always thought that if I wanted revenge on anyone I knew in the service, all I'd have to do was repeat some of the jokes they told at staff meetings.

Looks as if I was right.

My high school was so over budget, the yearbook had to be illustrated by hand

Well, actually . . . I needed an illustration for a post about Jay Leno claiming to have found strangely prescient captions in celebrities' high school yearbooks, so I snapped a few pictures of my own. This is one of the ones I didn't use -- I decided to see what it would look like as a rubber stamp.

Paraphrasing a hymn that's fallen out of favour

YHWH, I know You are near
I just can't pronounce Your name.
Maybe I'll just call you "Lord"
And we'll leave it at that.
What do You think?

Gotta watch those writers

A sci-fi author gets a suspended sentence for obstructing a border guard, though he says he was just asking why they were going through his stuff . . . And a less successful writer gets over four years for trying to publicize his book on terrorism by sending fake anthrax spores to anyone he could think of.

Can we blame this on mental trauma caused by too many rejection slips? I know there are lots of things I'd like to blame on that.

"Eastern" = "Normal"

That's the theory of mind behind my second cartoon contest entry.

"Give me liberty, AND all your money!"

Well, I hope the people who bring us organic produce never dealt with this farmer.

("Patrick Henry"? Did he call his place "Liberty-or-Death Farms"? The Statue of Liberty arm-in-arm with the Grim Reaper would make a pretty eye-catching logo.)

FENTER said that the robbery was not about the bank, but about a fight against the Government

So don't take it personally, lady, I'm just threatening you with a gun to get you to hand over a chunk of the money your customers entrusted to you. Nothing to get upset about.

"Never got old or tiring" -- I like the sound of that.

Though I felt compelled to enter the Erma Bombeck Writing Competition, I -- rightly -- did not expect to win. ("Rightly" because, with two years to plan, I didn't start work on my entry till a couple of days before the deadline.)

I didn't expect the judges to take the time to comment on my work either -- but I found today that one of them did, and the contest coordinator has passed this on to me:

Loved the approach. Really effective, and never got old or tiring. Terrific dialogue

How do I say how surprised and grateful I am that someone liked my work that much?

Anyway, since it's that good, I'm posting here for your enjoyment my imaginative essay "That Reminds Me". (Not really so imaginative, either; my memory's really like that. I had a hard time finding the file it was in because I'd named it "soy sauce coffeemaker".)

“Why is there a bottle of soy sauce on the coffeemaker?” my husband asked one Saturday afternoon.
“Because I have a visual memory.”
“You mean soy sauce looks like coffee, so you put them together?”
“No, no! You see, I just read something about how some people need visual cues to remember things. Like leaving your car keys out to remind you that you have another child and he has to be picked up from homework club.”
“So what is the soy sauce supposed to remind you of?”
“What to make for dinner.”
“Oh, we’re having something Chinese?”
“If we were, the vegetable knife would be pointed North to remind me to get the Chinese cookbook out of the spare room. No, we’re having my secret ingredient macaroni and cheese.”
“That’s the secret ingredient? I thought it was non-alcoholic vodka.”
“It is, actually, but I forgot to get that when I was at the store because I wasn’t wearing my red scarf. So we’re having alternative secret ingredient mac and cheese.”
“Okay . . . What’s for dessert? Something with pecans?”
“No, the nuts are to remind me to tell you that Ed called while you were out.”
“What did he want?”
“He’s pretty sure he saw the alien mothership over the high school just now – but it may have been a double rainbow. He says if they take him away, we can have his kayak.”
“I’m not holding my breath.”
“Me either. If I were, I’d have left a life vest on the coffee table.”
“Your visual cues all seem kind of specialized.”
“You have to use what works for you, it said. Besides, you wouldn’t want it to be too obvious, like leaving the tent in the driveway to remind you you’re going camping that weekend. There’d be a break-and-enter before we got out of the driveway.”
“If you have to have a burglary, wouldn’t that be the best time?”
“I’ll have to think about that. Put Grandma’s candlestick on the windowsill to remind me.”
“Okay. Now can I take the soy sauce off the coffeemaker and, you know, make myself some coffee?”
“Sure, just remember to put it back . . . But what are you listening to?”
“Your memory may be visual, but mine’s vocal.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means there’s a little voice in my head saying, ‘Just hang in there and she’ll get tired of this, like she got tired of trying to grow our own rice.’”

Remember I said real frugal people don't rob banks?

Now the FBI agrees:

“Frugal Felon” Not So Frugal
Hits Second Bank This Month

The New Yorker would never stoop to saying YOU MAY HAVE ALREADY WON!

From their contest page:

NO PURCHASE OR PAYMENT OF ANY KIND IS NECESSARY TO ENTER OR WIN THIS CONTEST AND SWEEPSTAKES.

A purchase will not improve chances of winning.

CONSUMER DISCLOSURE: You have not yet won.

To see my entry, click here (yes, I know I should've used the dog with the open mouth, but I didn' t know there was one).

Things you learn while pricing insurance for the cats

"Feral" is a breed, according to at least one insurance company.

The world's tamest feral cat lives with us, but we think of her as an exotic shorthair.

Now this

From the Post:

In a surprise move, folks at Chicago-based Tribune Co. are reportedly reeling in the wake of news that CEO Randy Michaels has banned, literally, some 119 words and phrases from being used on-air at his company's flagship radio station, WGN.

Going forward, area residents are less at risk of hearing such cliched phrases as "perfect storm" and "behind closed doors" on the news talk station's airwaves, although the fact of the matter is the list of 119 that cannot be utilized includes such common words as "alleged," "authorities" and "officials."

Sixteen of the banned words or phrases appeared in the first two sentences of this story.

I'd find it hard to run an ESL news blog without the word "officials".

In this, for example, the official was actually the Assistant U.S. Trustee. If I used that mouthful of a title, I'd have to explain it to my audience -- and they don't really need to know what it means. They just need to know that someone in a responsible position at the courthouse tried to stop this swindler.

Sorry -- this alleged swindler.

What would I do without "alleged"? Or "accused of"? Or "the charge says"?

Real Frugal People Don't Rob Banks

That's why I put "frugal" in quotes here.

Nice of him to let the cashier keep some of her employer's money. But if he's caught, he'll go to jail just the same. He needs to do some cost-benefit analysis.

I see this all the time in the FBI press releases. People risk losing their freedom for years, not to mention their good names, for an amount of money they could've earned in a year or two.

So when do we get to the Modern Optimal?

Everyone's heard of the Medieval Warm Period (maybe all the more since we weren't supposed to believe in it -- that worked for the Tooth Fairy, too), but I didn't know that it "used to be known as the Medieval Optimal before it became politically incorrect to think of a warm climate as desirable".

More from Lorne Gunter on unaccustomed warmth:

Grapes grew in southern England. Norse settlers established farms in Greenland. And the plagues and territorial wars driven by scarcity that marked the Late Middle Ages were centuries in the future -centuries notable for their coldness during the Little Ice Age (1300 to 1850).

Peace and plenty. Why try to hold back a tide like that?

Not that they're trying to scare you or anything

"the said someone"?

If I ever decide to go bad, I know how: I'll answer one of these scam messages and offer my professional services to turn them into passable English.

Where can I get me one of those "United States International Passports"? Oh, I've got a regular one, but it just doesn't seem special enough.

On second thought . . .

Toots on the bus this morning wasn't my old kindergarten teacher, Mrs. Abbott-Costello -- she was this woman!

I can't help being glad she's lost all her money and has to take transit.

"Oh yeah? Same ta YOU, toots!"

A woman getting off the bus this morning who apparently, like my kindergarten teacher, mistook physical awkwardness and slowness on the uptake for malice, screeched at me, "You're in my way, lady!"

I loudly thanked her for telling me that, since it was my life's goal to trouble decent people like herself. She was halfway down the block before I finished, though her husband or something was still standing outside the bus with his mouth open, staring in at me. Everyone else looked away.

In real life, you don't get applause for smacking down the most obnoxious passenger on the bus. People aren't sure you deserve it -- they didn't hear the whole thing, or can' t tell what's being said -- and anyway, they don't have a dog in this fight.

It's the one who takes it public who comes under scrutiny first. This often means the one with the louder voice. Guess who that tends to be.

Hm. Maybe she was my kindergarten teacher. Unlikely, but it makes me feel better.

Flame on

Reconsidering

Things to do before you can expect the printer to work again

1. Put paper tray back in
   
2. Make sure there's paper in it
3. Put cartridge back in . . .
   

"France's leading expert on modern thought" has quoted extensively from a philosopher who's only about as real as De Selby:

Leading French intellectual Bernard-Henri Levy has been caught red-faced for praising the work of a philosopher who, it turns out, was invented as a joke by a journalist from a satirical daily.

He says the creator is "a good philosopher all the same". Maybe, but he's probably more use to society as a satirist.

Overheard in the animal hospital waiting room

"This place is about as much fun as a people hospital."

The drama drags on

(Sigh) Click to enlarge

Maybe someday my stuff will be as good as Mary Worth.

Quaint Urban Folk Myth

"If the car in front of you can make a left on yellow-going-red more or less safely, why then, so can you!"

I'd gotten used to seeing my light turn green as a car turned left in front of me -- but now, there are almost always two of them. Talk about coattails, tailgating, coattailgating -- whatever you want to call it.

Look, people. It may be okay to put yourself in a position where, if the light doesn't stay green long enough for you, your only option is to turn on what is really someone else's green light. But if the guy in front of you is doing this, and you're just barging through the intersection all but attached to his rear bumper, then what you're doing is cutting someone off.

Not so sure now that I want either of my sons to be successfull cartoonists

Bill Watterson, one of the greats, says:

Ah, the life of a newspaper cartoonist -- how I miss the groupies, drugs and trashed hotel rooms!

But he knows when to quit:

It's always better to leave the party early. If I had rolled along with the strip's popularity and repeated myself for another five, 10 or 20 years, the people now "grieving" for "Calvin and Hobbes" would be wishing me dead and cursing newspapers for running tedious, ancient strips like mine instead of acquiring fresher, livelier talent. And I'd be agreeing with them.

Share the Road

This is a first draft of what was going to be a contest entry, only I decided to go in another direction, so I'm posting it here. The reason I bolded first draft is that it's unfinished and dripping with what one of the local art schools calls "first ideas". However, I think it has its good points. If nothing else, this is a pretty accurate story of life and parking in our neighbourhood up till a couple of weeks ago.

“What are you guys doing up there?” I called as a heavy THUD shook my basement office.
“It wasn’t us!”
No, it wasn’t. It was a construction crew out in the back lane, excavating a hole big enough for both our cars to fall into.
Okay, no big deal. Would’ve been nice if the city or the contractor or somebody had let us know in advance, but . . . Anyway, by the looks of things, I still had a little time to get the cars out of the driveway before it was cut off by the brink of the abyss.
For a while, we parked in front of the house. Again, no big deal. Just a little further to carry in all the groceries. And it couldn’t go on forever, could it?
No – it ended one morning when we saw, planted right by our cars, a sign saying NO PARKING BY ORDER OF CITY ENGINEER.
So we couldn’t park in our own driveway or in front of our house. This was beginning to be a big deal, but then we realized we had the perfect fallback parking space: In front of an empty house around the corner. Our only fear was that the realtor would track us down and complain about how hard it was to sell a house in today’s market even without a rusted-out clunker parked in front. That, and getting a child with a laptop and a trombone over to the car every Thursday morning.
This lasted until the crew started parking their backhoe in the space.
Then it finally became a big deal. We parked wherever it seemed vaguely possible: In front of the house across the street, after asking the people there. In front of the house on the corner, without asking, though I knew the woman there and didn’t think she’d mind. Besides, no one else would want to park in front of her house – the place was so close to the corner it was illegal.
One day I left the car in one of the spaces by the park for half the day. Hey, I pay taxes.
Just when we thought the construction project was going to last longer than either of our cars, the crew disappeared. I saw them at work over on the expensive side of town. They left behind only a stray LOCAL TRAFFIC ONLY sign and a few unpaved spots in the lane – nothing big, only a few inches deep.
We sighed with relief and went back to parking in our own driveway and walking less than half a mile to our cars.
Then, one morning . . . THUD.
Does anyone have an empty lot to rent?

Minimum Security Hotels

C.S. Lewis once compared life on earth to a building which some residents believe is a hotel, and the rest believe is a prison. The first group thinks the place is awful, the second thinks it's not so bad, considering what it is.

Some Trip Advisor reviews remind me of this. And it always seems to be the staff that thinks the place is a prison.

This, for example. Read how a guest asks the hotelier where his dinner is -- it's been an hour and a half since he ordered. And the gracious host tells him he's "not at McDonald's."

Guest cancels his order, other people who've been waiting start clapping. Landlady throws them all out of the dining room and locks the door, screams at them to go to their rooms and not talk to anyone. Hotelier threatens to call the police.

Okay . . .

Oh, and the guest gets charged for the meal he canceled.

This is mild compared to that:

The lady who answered the room service actually recommended I order a pizza from a small place in town. Strange recommendation from someone running room service, but I was appreciative of the honesty.

Leftover Vegetables

A guy named Alonzo Bodden, on the Jay Leno show, says pretty much what I feel about health scare stories in the news:

A couple of years ago, tomatoes were deadly. Remember that? A tomato was deadly, and the year before that it was spinach. The FDA is run by a seven-year-old kid that hates vegetables.

Tomatoes and spinach? C'mon! Everyone knows it's carrots that'll kill you. Also parsnips, turnips (anything that ends in "nip" bites), cabbage -- I call it Attack of the Winter Vegetables.

How's this for a new signature? Illegible enough?

Well, that bit in the middle does look somewhat like a W.

What have I been doing the past couple of days?

Among other things, like doing extra assignments I recklessly volunteered for, I've been perfecting (imperfecting?) a deliberately mediocre comic strip.

No, I didn't draw it -- I can't draw. It's made by turning photos into faux sketches with the "edge" effect in MS Photo Editor. I know . . .

(If you can't read the text, click on the strip for a larger image.)