Deer antlers

Here is a list of things that I have heard will get you high, sexed or pumped up.

It is for you to decide which category goes with which item.

Tequila                                             rabbit testicles

banana peels                                     goats milk

sunflowers                                        Killer Bee honey

deer antlers                                      California Hemp

Sperm whale brains                          Lavender Tree bark     

Peach pits                                        Old Faithful Water

carrots                                             used motor oil    

pregnant women urine                      carrot Cake

cassava                                            eye of newt

Bat wing soup                                  Burt Reynolds hair

Shark fin                                          elephant tusk

Oolong Tea                                      Barry White sweat

*Disclaimer   -I am mostly insane. These are items I have heard from equally disturbed individuals may do something to a person if ingested.  I think all of them are a crock and I am not suggesting or recommending any of them.  In fact, Burt Reynolds hair is a transplant and it was not from his head!

A Player

I was at Tony's Bar watching an awkward looking guy dancing with an average looking lady.  Tony's place had about six epoxy top tables with a heavily varnished wooden bar and several different types of chairs.  The cigarette smoke was thicker than the local drunks.  Tube Snake Boogie was just finishing up and I heard Awkward say to Average,

Awkward:  You look nice while you dance, I am sure that song was not made for dancing.


       Average:   What was it made for? How do I look while I am not dancing?


Well, It is not like I am going to take you home to screw ya.


        What?


No, well I have standards, (short pause) I can do ya on a car or in the bushes.  But you are not coming home with me.
      
The slap made a loud smack on his cheek and the guy sitting next to him just busted out laughing.  Awkward did not seem surprised.

Average grabbed her drink and started to run off when she said,
        Look dickhead, I am not some slut you can just dance with on the floor and then expect to    dance with in the back of a car.

Wait, I think you got it all wrong.  You also make me look better on the dance floor.  Hell, all these bitches want me now. And not in the back of a car, you can not get any thrusting going in the back of a car.  On the hood with the moon on my ass. It says it in the Bible "In the shadows is where all the naughty stuff is". You can keep you shirt on and I will do my best to keep the mosquitoes off ya.
      
          You are fucked up.

Average was crying now and Awkward felt bad.

Hey, let me buy you one more drink and have one more dance to make it up to you. Then you can go home and cry.


       Is that an apology?

 I  started talking to the bar tender about chicken fingers and boiled peanuts.  After ordering another drink, I noticed Average was gone and Awkward was paying his tab with a handful of crumpled bills. I looked at him expecting to see a dejected soul going home alone.  What I saw was a Player of the extraordinary kind.  As I started my walk home, I did not see Awkward leaning on the hood of a car. He was in the bushes on an Average night..

Friday Science: The Scientific Method

Infectious Processes was the most enjoyable and educational class I attended while at university.  I attended three institutions of higher learning (in stark contrast to the other institutions I have been asked to attend).  All of them introduced classes that cracked open my brain and jammed sweet information into its crevasses.  During these classes there were sparks going off in my brain.  I would walk out of class smiling so wide my head hurt.  I had just heard, seen or learned something I completely understood yet never imagined before.  The quantity of new information swirling in my brain could only result in endorphin overload.  This must be why newborns seem to radiate and smile for no apparent reason.  When senses are on joyous overload, what else can happen?  Infectious Process was just that way.   Dr. Mike Sweeney was a direct and blunt teacher with a clear goal in mind.  To make us wonder and search for answers. 

He was a researcher in Immunology just at the start of the AIDS epidemic.  He announced in class “This disease will change the way we look at diseases, all diseases FOREVER”.  He was sort of shaking when he said it.  His senses were overloading.  He admitted having very little idea of how AIDS worked or what it was.  He was freakin excited about finding out.  He was going to find out and he was dragging us along with his tidal wave of enthusiasm.  First he needed to show us how to do research.  He gave us published papers on topics ranging from blood diseases to immune responses in goats.  Each week, he would ask us what we thought about the papers.  He had a surprise for us, some of the papers were published but were incompetent works of drivel.  We did not see it and he showed us why they were garbage.  Some were excellent and he showed us why they were worth reading.  Well, smack me with an artichoke, I never imagined an article in a prestigious and cited scientific journal could be cattle dung scientifically speak. Now read with experience and wisdom.  

Most of the bad papers tried to answer more than one question with the research.  Answer one question or solve one problem at a time then you can move on to the next one.  Answering that one question will generate possibly hundreds of new questions.  Later on Ralph Prince, another great teacher of the scientific method said challenging research for a good scientist.   Ralph would “stir the pot” as he would say whenever some fancy scientist would act like they had “all” the answers.  Maybe Ralph did not know all the answers but neither did the fool on the hill. 

For those who want to succeed as a scientist, hear is the short list.

Read everything remotely related, know what you know and do not know.

Learn and solve one question at a time.

Remember, you do not know everything.

The best simple reference for the Scientific Method is by Norman Edmund

Cranberry Sauce

I have seen cranberries and they do not look or taste anything like the sauce.  In fact, the jiggling motion is a little disturbing.  There was this other stuff that used to appear like spontaneous generation on the dinner table and it containing cranberries and orange peels.  These two substances are common ingredients in furniture polish.  Why would anyone think this cat hack would be edible.  True, Bananas and Mayonnaise works out and Bean flavored ice cream is all the rage.  I know that if you add enough sugar to anything, it will taste good.  If honey was not so messy, well, never mind that.  How did vanilla flavor come from the bean?  It is poisonous.  Who tried to convince the first caveman that a chicken egg was edible?  Chocolate is another bean that does not resemble the finished product.   These tools are for gynechologists and cranberry sauce makers.  I told you it was disturbing.

I suppose since it is a berry and the bears and the birds were eating it, humans figured why not.  The sauce that gets stuck in the can is a whole separate bag of shoestrings.  I have seen gravy do that jiggle thing and I have seen thighs do it also.  If you cannot easily get something out of a can, do not eat it.   That is what I always say.  For everything you ever needed to know about cranberry sauce, follow the link.

Weather

I really do not like weather.  Hot, rain, wind, cold, fog, hurricanes, Low pressure, high pressure, no pressure.  The science of weather is interesting though.  In Florida, you cannot really count on weather predictions any more general than, "It may be nice tomorrow" or "Tomorrow it will be hot". These predictions are probably eighty percent of the forecasts in central Florida.  Lately there has been cold, wind, cold, rain, cold, really cold, fog, cold, rain.  Screw that. I want to get the weather on the State Ballot and have it voted out or sent to another Committee Review Panel where they will give it a slow death. 

I was driving in the rain last night and I hit one of those puddles that are deeper than a puddle should be on the interstate system.  Hydroplaning is similar to peeing in the dark.  You think everything is on target but you worry about ending up too far to the left or right.  My dad used to yell, "Hang on!" or "Here we go!" whenever  he would hydroplane or lose control while driving.  Hang on! was more serious because it meant  gravity was going to be challenged.  During a landslide north of Kolob Canyon, I was sleeping in the back of the 1971 Jeep Wagoneer with my head on the wheel well.  I hear my dad yell, "Hang ON!" and then we ran over something like a tree log in the middle of the canyon road.  Mom screamed and dad informed  us that the whole mountain was washing away.  He added that he was putting the Jeep in Four Wheel LOW.  I was not comforted.  We slid  (hydroplaned) on the mud and rock until we got to this tunnel that appeared out of the cold fog. 

That mountain slide was caused by unpredictable weather.  You were wondering where I had hydroplaned to. 

How do I look?

I was at the local McDungeon getting my fix of breakfast burrito when I looked at the pay window only to see someone I recognized.  I thought it was him.  Upon reaching the pay window, it was clearly a young Dave.  Same round face, same John Lennon specs, same lip-bitten angry bewilderment.  I just gazed on him while he gave me my change correctly.  As we parted, he said in the same Dave  inflection, “Have a nice Thanksgiving” and I blurted out, “Say hello to your Dad”.  I called Dave upon reaching my office and ask him if some of his seed was misplaced about sixteen or seventeen years ago.  He said "not that he remembered". 

I recently saw another guy that looks very similar to my friend Rich.  He has the same body shape, lurching shuffle, facial expressions and even the same sort of Roy Orbison hair thing going on.  From the distance, it was Rich.  As he approached me in the hallway, I would still swear it was him.  It was not him but I followed until I heard him speak.  He was not from Long Island or wherever Rich is from but they sound similar.  I was told that there was a kid at my high school that could have been my twin.  I saw  picture of him and it was spooky similar.    I wonder if his hips cramp up when  he is sitting on a motorcycle?

I can understand people with the same facial structure sounding alike, it is a physical thing.  I cannot understand a person that looks like someone else having the same eyeglasses and speech deviancy.  Maybe it is that I recognize the eyeglasses first.  How does body shape relate to hair styles?  I have no answers for this.  I have no answer and I am now having a writing block.

Technology

I am sitting here typing on a laptop that is five years old. The CD/DVD player “fell out” some time ago.  This Toshiba still runs good and does my low tech email, searching and blogging just fine. The display is still quite impressive. I do not have a TV in my house that is newer than eight years old. I have a digital tuner box on the TV in my room and the twenty year old television in the living room area. The TV on my son's Wii/PS2 system is at least fifteen years old. I am a child of the seventies and I do not have a decent stereo system. I had a kick ass Pioneer system until I was robbed by a crack head. My cars are all at least twelve years old.

Even though it sounds like I am complaining, I am not. Occasionally I get frustrated with the junk, like last night when I threw the remote at the combination TV/VCR/DVD that no longer plays DVDs and eats VHS tapes. It was cold and I was in bed and I just wanted to turn the damn thing off and go to sleep. I could not get the thing to turn off. I chucked the all-in-one remote at the on/off switch.. I would have look for the batteries in the morning, I thought. The button on the TV does not work well so it took about three pushes to get the freakin thing off. The point is, I think that in the near future, I am SOL with all my stuff. I could actually be without a computer, TV, cell phone (six year old virgin mobile no contract battery challenged phone) and car in the blink of an afternoon. I can picture it. I will be driving home when the timing belt on my thirteen year old car goes snap, crackle and pop. I will take out my cell phone and watch the roaming symbol flash until the battery goes dead. I will be trying to call my wife who is out looking for a nice used TV because the one in the bedroom fell off the wall and smashed the computer. The tumblin TV yanked the cable line out of the back of the digital tuner box and my wife thought to dump water on the smoking mess. So, in less than a blink of my swollen eyes, I am techno-screwed and it will take most of ten grand from my retirement fund to get me out of this snarl.

Ignoring the monetary problem, I just do not think I can upgrade my old brain to handle the new stuff. I would like to buy new stuff of course. Will I need to know XML to set up the new flat screen TV? Will I have to buy a new DVD player although they will be obsolete in less than five years? Should I go to the edge and get a system that will handle streaming content? Do I need a phone that plays Scrabble, takes pictures, searches for country diners in Yehaw Junction and has GPS so they can find me when my car breaks down and I take a short cut through the swamp?

I have an Apple Centris 650 in my shed that works as well as the day I first used it twenty years ago. My daughter drives a 1991 Honda Civic named Percy. I have my grandma's eight dollar mixer in the kitchen that has those metal spinning things that throw cake batter all over the walls. I like the stuff of memories. I am sure that once I upgrade my brain along with the endangered technology in my life, I will feel secure and be able to sit back in the uncomfortable easy chair I got from a yard sale at a thrift store. I remember trying to upgrade the Toughbook firmware in order to load Windows service pack 2. The old laptop did not upgrade well and it is in the shed with the rest of the old junk.

Happy acres here I come.

Zoology Lesson 101

If it looks like a dog, it is in the Genus Canis

Spiders and Crabs are cousins.

Small birds are finches.

A Chimpanzee and a Bonobo are most likely the same thing.

Simon Cowell is actually the first educated silverback gorilla.

A snake and a limbless lizard are not even cousins.

A zebra is a horse in striped pajamas to me!

No matter how much they tell me that a buzzard is a close cousin to the chicken hawk, I do not believe them.

There are two million different types of insects and they are all disgusting under a microscope but insect blood is green and that is cool.

Due to DNA mapping, phylogeny naming is going to change so speaking Greek and Latin is only as valuable as speaking gibberish. 

(All bets are off with plant taxonomy.  The groups make no sense, there are plants that look like palms but are actually vegetables.  An oak leaf looks identical to the plant leaf that is found in my spaghetti.)

With this information in memory, you will get about a D+ or a C- on the average college Zoology class quiz.

Spirograph

One of the true joys of being a kid was the Spirograph.  Not a screamer at the opening of presents Christmas morning yet secretly a gold mine of frivolity. They could not have been expensive. Even though there were instructions, I never read them. Discovery and exploration was bursting out of the box.  Plastic was still a kind of novelty in itself. 

The anticipation of that first scribble with the small wheel inside the big wheel had adrenalin pumping through my veins rivaling any event of life except maybe at the moment of death.  I wore out the paper with this first wheel while quickly mastering the “keeping the pen in the hole and on the paper” technique.  Moving on to the oblong wheel created a new skill base and an even more stupendous character.  How is that possible I mused audibly.

My mom and brother tried to ruin the whole deal by telling me that it was all a math thing.  Math, smath, I could draw like Da Vinci and create new universes.  Addition and subtraction could not do that.  Of all my toys past and present,  I think of this one most often.  If you Google Whack “Spirograph” you will see I am not alone.

               

The word SPIROGRAPH is not even in most spelling checkers.  What a sham and even a bigger shame.  I added it to my spell checker for sure.

                 

                               

I told you so!

I have no idea how that last post ended up looking like it did.  Aliens, communists or evil-dooers.  I tried to fix it.  The copy only got more disturbing.

Cent Key

Recently, I found myself scanning every key on my keyboard for the “cent” sign.  I know it was there although I have not used it in a long time. I remember making pictures during Jr. High typing class with only cent signs and percent signs.   I did not find it on the keys.  I chucked this mess into the Remediation Basket and decided to sleep on it.   The next day, for some reason, and really, if history is any indication of the present, it will not be of any help, I decided to check the MS Word help file to see if this “icon” still exists.  I really have to laugh as to not cry because have you seen the MS Word dashboards lately.  Not only will I never use ninety seven percent of those options (not to mention the pull down menus) but the menus have been organized by a Hun.  How hard would it be to put the word “help” on the freakin  screen.   My best guess was a little faintly colored and poorly highlighted question mark on the fringe of my screen.   I less than enthusiastically typed the word “cent” into the help box and hit the enter key.  Low and Behold, it returned buppkiss, nothing, nada, zip, hooey.  Smack me with an Asian Carp, it turns out that the word is “cents” with an S.

This possibly plural word returned one article with the title Dear Crabby: Dollars are lovely; cents make them what they are”  and even after reading this blog three and four times I still do not know the meaning of the title.  However, it was an informative little note.  Ctrl +/ then Ctrl +C gives you a ¢_.  I tried it and I once again showed my ignorance of all things techno because you do not hit the plus keys. The plus word here means “and at the same time hit”.  After three tries I got it, a little cents sign.  Feeling all that about myself I continued typing and now I was getting all these little letters in some strange font.  Not only did I create a cents sign with a special key stroke sequence which I will never remember, I lent control of my fonts to an alien life form with very good eyesight.   Example:  _{¢.  I did it but what the hell is that!.}  It took me five trips to the HOME menu bar to get out of this one and I never really did.  Ok, so they did away with the cent sign and there is a way to get one.  

I really hate it when I do not notice change.  Change is continuous and I should be constantly looking for it and embracing it.  One more thing, the MS Help search was merely a web search an I could have done that without the stupid question mark.

Ten things I have learned since high school

A Women’s butt appears smaller while sitting on a motorcycle.

If an animal‘s pile of excrement is nearly as large or larger than your own, it will make a lousy pet.

Finishing a difficult task is not the same as finishing a simple task.

Only women can become “hysterical”  - Plato

Nothing is free, except God’s Grace, whatever that is.  It is like the burning bush.  It is a simple statement but very hard to explain and grasp.

The best car to own is one that starts every time.

Global Ignorance is far more prevalent and dangerous than Global Warming.

Gun Control and a Safe Sex are in the same barrel.

A woodpecker’s brain is all mushy.

Men who say they are not confused most of the time are liars.

Walking

Until recently, I had not noticed the quantity of people that walked with a limp or a “hitch”.  I remember Don Meredith of Dallas football fame and Monday Night Football used to call it a “hitch in his gitalong”.  My hitch is caused by some malfunction in my ankle causing pain enough to favor that step.  The pain goes away after about twenty steps and then I resume my slouched amble.  My pace is slow compared to most walkers.  I can walk three miles slower than most and I still get there when I need to be there.  I never could understand people walking in a hurry all the time.  I have been a lot of places and in a retrospective glance; there was not much reason to get there quickly for any of them.    

There are some walkers that shift all their weight to one leg or the other in an exaggerated fashion causing them to wobble.  There are those that must have extremely tight hamstrings or a sphincter problem because they take very short strides and hardly get anywhere with each step.  Some take much larger steps than needed causing a bobbing sort of motion reminiscent of John Cleese and the Silly Walk.  An interesting gait is from the mostly men that had a crib rail too high when they were babies and they rise up on their toes with each step.

I think that most hitches are a physical problem related to weight or injury.  There are some that are pure “style”.  I have twice seen a man with a walking style I can only describe as Osmosis in fine clothing. He is a tall man of probably six and one half feet.  He has a large frame without fat.  I am trying to figure out why he was not a professional athlete with a physique like his.  This man is finely dressed in expensive shirt, pants, cowboy boots and topped with a fine beaver felt hat.    His tanned skin is accentuated by the perfectly sized brass belt buckle.   The amount of starch required to keep those creases razor sharp required a bushel of taters.  His stride is probably a normal distance for a large strong man.  The stride is extremely slow, almost intentional.  Maybe twice as slow as a normal stride yet because of his size he is actually moving quite fast. His arm swing is also slow to match his gait as required by physics.  The heel of his boot plants quietly on the tile and his foot rolls forward onto his toes.  My Holy Father in Heaven, he has take only one step in the time it took you to read this paragraph.  His movement is addictive to the eyes yet painful to watch.  With his posture very straight and upright, he moves seemingly effortlessly through the hallways look forward at a definite end.  I followed him in astonishment until he entered the restroom and where I dare not linger.  I saw him a few days later gliding out of the building heading for the parking lot without a hitch. 

My friend Bob tells me that as a teenager, he and the boys worked on their “walks”.   I always thought he was an arrogant dil-hole but it was just his walk. I think about walking differently and I watch more carefully.  It can be an old lady with a painful scoliosis walker aided stride or a young lady with a nice swish of her behind or maybe an old man with the Tim Conway shuffle but now I look deeper for a meaning buried inside the walk.

Friday Special - Sea Turtles

Every Friday, I will try to post something educational.  Hopefully I can create anticipation in my readers of which there are currently none.  I will start to tell people about my blog in about a week so. Today's educational blob is about my friend and everyone's friend the Sea Turtle.

 I read recently that Sea Turtles can breathe through their butts while on deep sea dives. This is not just fascinating.  This type of news is wonderous.  An auxiliary lung like structure is attached to part of the large intestine.  The process is called Cloacal Respiration and can draw oxygen out of sea water. 

"Smack me with The Beaver"  I am continuously astounded at diversity.

WikiLeaks

This subject is one of the main reasons I started this blog.  I feel there are a million sides to this story and all the possible scenarios are running rudely throughout my skull.  The need for a logical resolution in my brain is becoming paramount.  I want to have a well-thought-out position on this issue.  I would like to sound intelligent if possible when someone corners me on this issue instead of setting off my fight or flight reflex and I either cry or strike out with a utensil.

    I know we have only seen the beginning of this sort of information management.  The technology to gain information of this nature has increased in the same way Blu-Ray and laptop computers are almost extinct.  Five years ago, only major corporations and governments had the resources to mine information of this sensitive nature.  Now, a twelve year old with a droid phone can slam security cameras at peep shows on  MLK Blvd. while texting his mom about being late for dinner.  I suppose some laws may have been broken while gathering this information like hacking firewalls and such.  In contrast to that process, if people are just browsing the data streams and picking out information that is encrypted (or not) and subsequently crack it open, I don’t think that is breaking a law.  If I find a letter on the street with no stamp on it, am I breaking a law by opening it and reading it?

The Watergate tapes, the Pentagon Papers, the Valerie Plame thing and all the other backdoor political follies that have been uncovered point to a need for some transparency in the world.  One reporter talking about the leaks stated something like this "All in all, the US diplomats in these leaks are showing that they are hard working responsible and moral American citizens".  It is only the big dogs that have to worry, CEOs, Presidents, etc.  No CIA agents have been outed (Like Valerie was), no mole has been killed because of these Wikileaks documents.  I figure some powerful people are preparing damage control.  Wikileaks has promised to release more information from major corporations.   

I cannot be happier.  Although I have secrets, I would gladly give all of them up to the internet if everyone else did.

A brilliant daughter makes a brittle wife    from  http://www.worldofquotes.com/proverb/Dutch/1/index.html

Plants

Here in Florida, there have been two major cold snaps so far and another one is hitching a ride on an Alberta Clipper (In the mid-1990s, Former Minnesota Vikings head coach Dennis Green erroneously referred to an Alberta Clipper as a "Calcutta Clipper" when talking about weather patterns blah, blah, blah) and should arive full force tonight.  Plant death starts occuring at the well advertised temperature of 28 degrees F.  (conversion http://www.albireo.ch/temperatureconverter/)   The temperature has to stay at or below this level for several hours for plant tissue death to occur.  There is also death that occurs from frost (ice crystals ripping the plant cell tissue apart) which can blanket your plants at a warmer temperature.   OK, enough background.

I am already bored with this post, it is getting too complicated.  Short version.  I have tropical and sub-tropical dead plants.  Luckily for me, fire will take them away nicely.

Morning after

"There has got to be a morning after"

I was just thinking about the Auburn/Oregon game as it relates to anything.  I know that a bunch of people spent lots of money on this seemingly very important event.  I too was at a bar watching it because I do not  have cable tv or anything like cable tv.  I watched the first half of the game and I saw a good first half of a game.  I went home and went to instant non-gratifying sleep.  I watch professional sports like I drink beer.  I take a little nip and go home.

feelings

My initial feelings are :

Oh brother
Who cares
Wait and see
Hang in there
Momma