It's about time

In hockey it's a hat trick - three scores.  I just call it turning 60.


The first score seemed to take forever.The next not so long.And the third; I probably could have held my breath.

I thought I'd take heart or more accurately the idea of that Julie and Julia babe and write something every day of my fifty-ninth year.

No.  My life has never been so interesting and if it were, then I'd have better things than this to do.


Still, there is much to be considered between now and next September 19th.

• The process of elimination
• Good dog Rover.
• Old friends, imaginary pets, and those voices - always the voices!
• Cannoli
• The Ghost Whisperer, Wu Tang, Ayn Rand and Bigfoot.

There is more.  No doubt. But my attention span has been stretched to its limit.

Oh, and no bucket lists, no senior moments and no poetry.

Jaime

Nothin' Says Lovin'

The Royal Family Spent $70 Million on a Wedding and All I Got Was This Lousy Piece of Cake

“Seyi Obakin, the only Nigerian on the Prince William’s Royal Wedding official guest list released at the weekend by St. James’ Palace, will receive the Royal Wedding Cake on behalf of Centrepoint.”

One of only three Africans attending the event, Obakin was listed alongside David Beckham and Sir Elton John among others on the so-called “merit section of the guest list.” (Centrepoint is apparently a non-profit charitable organization run by Mr. Obekin.)

So I expect to find an e-mail from Mr. Obakin, and soon, begging me to wire his solicitor $10,000 so he can return with his friends David and Sir Elton, to his homeland with the cherished cake and re-take his rightful position and fortune in the bureau.”

This must explain how beloved the British are on the "dark continent". "No, really, we'll never finish it all. Let me wrap you up a nice piece of cake to bring back home for when the post-election rioting subsides."

Marie Antionette didn’t do too well public-relations-wise with that “cake for the deserving poor” gesture. I guess William et ux are hopeful that dear President Goodluck Johnson will have better luck.

Le Morte d’Arthur

" I didn’t want parents to think we were trying to exploit their children.’’Arthur Clokey

It was barely noticed, as was the news of the loss of his voice just last year, but there it was on the AP wire:

LOS OSOS, Calif. Animator Art Clokey, whose bendable creation Gumby became a pop culture phenomenon through decades of toys, revivals, and satires, died Friday. He was 88.

I never really liked Gumby – plain and simple. I definitely come to bury Gumby, not to praise him.

Still, Gumby had some integrity. He started as a guest on the Howdy Doody Show. Maybe he just didn’t want to upstage his host (Mr. Simpson, a Ms Ullman on the line for you). And Clokey didn’t market the man of clay as a toy for seven years or so, fearing that the little rubber toy would be seen as exploitive.

Arthur - you want exploitive?

‘Sex robot’ offers conversation, firm says

By Associated Press | January 11, 2010

LAS VEGAS - A New Jersey company says it has developed “the world’s first sex robot,’’ a life-size rubber doll that’s designed to engage the owner with conversation rather than lifelike movement.

At a demonstration at the Adult Entertainment Expo in Las Vegas on Saturday, the dark-haired, negligee-clad robot said “I love holding hands with you’’ when it sensed that its creator touched its hand.

Conversation? Rather than lifelike movement? Is that what AP really thinks the damn thing is for? If you’re in the market for a sex robot is conversation really your priority? Do you really care to find out if the two of you have any shared interests?

The AP tells us that the contraption costs about $9,000. So there you are in your Las Vegas hotel room with a cross between Barbie, Tickle-Me Elmo and a mechanical bull

“Sure, we can talk all you want Mister – all night if you want – it’s still gonna cost you nine grand.”

So it goes in the world of "bendable creations".


Jaime

Are You a Turtle?

Ho ho ho!

Back from the mission and it's the Holiday Season already!  And still such a long list of things to do before ringing out the old and ringing in the new.  Let's keep it simple then.

 If you are visiting from the link on Jim's Facebook page, welcome. Now get to work.  Here's what we have to get done:

1.  Use the expression "cut the cheese" without giggling.  The holiday parties give you perfect cover to slip in a casual and seemingly well-meaning "Oh please, let me help out -- would you like me to cut the cheese?"  If you're really drunk, really brave or pretty sure that you are alone, go ahead and let 'er rip.

2.  Next time your dental hygientist goes to floss your teeth, recoil in fear  and stare at it as if you've never seen dental floss before.  If she tries to explain it, laugh, give a sigh of relief  and say, "Yeah right!"

3.  Make something out of pipe cleaners and show it to a stranger. For extra credit -- give it to the stranget. For full course credit, take it back again and explain it wasn't really yours to give.

That's all for now.  I'm sure there's lots more to do, but the reindeer aren't going to feed themselves. 

Peace. Out.

Jaime
YBYSAIA

A Warning to the People of Earth

I got a note from my friend Raoul. It disturbed me:

"Kids, it’s not what you think. We don’t back up at 35 miles an hour into a line of schoolchildren by accident. In fact, we barely go 35 on the damned highway!

When one of us “loses control of the vehicle” and barrels across the lawn, you think it’s just by chance that we ram through plate glass window in the den and come to a stop in the middle of the nursery?

We’ve travelled the same damn neighborhood streets for our entire lives, and all of a sudden we don’t realize there’s an after-school crossing-guard at the corner of Sycamore and Warden? Talk about ducks in a row!

You see a “rash” of accidents; an alarming increase in the frequency of crashes involving what you so quaintly call “elderly drivers” The news reports on it and everybody wrings their hands. What is to be done? Testing? Fines and penalties? Family intervention? “Troubling”, you call it. “Disturbing and yet terribly complex.”

Well, little piglets, in the words of the old song – accidents speak louder than words.

The fact is; we are organized and angry. We live among you – we are your parents, your grandparents, your friends and eccentric neighbors. And we are crashing into your cars, your houses and your children every single day. And you are powerless against us.

Take our licenses. Fine us all you want Test us. Lock us away. Assuming we survive the crash, all you’ve really got for us is the death penalty. But it takes more than 12 years, on average, to get from trial to actual execution – natural causes are going to get us long before Sparky does. Meanwhile, dear friends, you will be joining our ranks by the thousands every single day.

For now, I’d say, kick little Thurber and Kendra out of the van the day they are physically capable of walking the quarter mile to their lacrosse or rowing practice. If you want us off the roads – move us yourselves! It won’t kill you to chauffer us to the pharmacy or the early show at the Cineplex. But it just might kill you if you don’t.”

 

And Then Gumby Died

De mortui nil nisi bonum.


I think it was first reported in the L.A. Times:

Dallas McKennon, an exuberant character actor and voice actor who helped enliven Gumby, Archie Andrews, Buzz Buzzard and many other animated characters, has died. He was 89.

It should mean something, but No! It won’t. No national day of mourning. No flags at half-staff, message from the Pope or weeping in the trailer-park. No solemn-voiced Katie Couric; no earnest Matt Lauer setting up a special fourth hour of the Today show; and no personal remembrance of “that very first interview I had with a much younger Gumby so many years ago” from Barbara Walters.

Mylar balloons? Candles and flowers placed at the feet of Sculpy replicas on make-shift shrines? No, none of it.

Not a peep from Eddie Murphy or the California Raisins.

Truth is I never much cared for his brand of claymation – it was crude, primitive, even inane. He had that annoying way of “skating” instead of running – he’d just strike a pose and kinda slide along the set. And his walk was too contrived – just as unconvincing as his facial expressions.

To sum it up, I guess I never really got the point of Gumby.

Still he was Gumby. Sad.

Don’t it always seem to go . . . .

Eeew la-la

Make mine medium please.

Boy I had a real head of steam there for a while.

Huffing and puffing and holding forth on matters of imminent concern – from bomb-sniffing rodents and the princess who loved them to world of supermodel Russian chess masters.

And then, poof. No note. No posting. No Toast.

One sunny day you push off the pier with nothing but the Atlantic between you and the Continent. Three days later, like poor Charlie Girard, there you are floundering in circles 130 miles off Cape Cod. Too tired – get me the Coast Guard and get me outta here.

Poof! No note. No posting. C’est ca!

Meanwhile a local toll collector turns chef in Walpole Mass. From today’s Herald “A Mass Pike toll collector and his high school buddy allegedly dismembered and “cooked” a cocaine supplier at a Walpole [Mass.] cement plant to wipe out a $70,000 drug debt in a grisly execution that has authorities still searching for the remains of the dealer.”

Poof! No recipe. No leftovers.

And a 21-year-old Oregon woman is charged with killing her pregnant friend, cutting open her abdomen and taking out her baby, which she then passed off as her own. Her friend’s body was found in the crawl space of the “new mommy’s” home. And the infant was found dead.

Damn.

Maybe Charlie Girard has the right idea. Get me a rowboat and a map of the North Atlantic. I’ll see you in three days.

Rah!

"Simplify.  Simplify."
                                                       - Thoreau

Patriots’ Cheerleader Tryouts

"More than 300 women showed up to compete to become a New England Patriots cheerleader at the Dana Farber Field House on Saturday February 28, 2009."(Globe Staff Photo / Essdras M Suarez)

This made me smile. And for more reasons than just the obvious. Yes they are pretty and sweet and sexy and seemingly healthy. And they dress that way and jump up and down and smile all the time.

But it goes deeper. We need cheerleader tryouts!

Wall St., continues to collapse. The Justice Department releases legal memos actually justifying torture. Torture! Abu Ghraib gets a new coat of paint, some plastic flowers and a new name. And every night, the warning: Beware of ShamWow imitators.

Girl Scout cookies are shrinking. The Sri Lankan cricket team is massacred and Leno has moved to 10:00.

My guided Chakra meditation CD is not going to get us out of this one. No-sirree! We need cheerleader tryouts. Something silly, fun, pretty - that calls us back to a better time. Something transcendental. Cheerleader tryouts.

I’m not saying we need cheerleaders. And I'm not saying we don't. That’s something different.We need cheerleader tryouts. Where the vision of cheerleadering and all it stands for sparkles in the minds of young girls. All that energy and earnest hope. The optimistic gutsiness it takes to suck it up, dance onto the field and yell real loud because you think you just might make the squad if you do.

No entitlements, no Ponzi scheme. Not “hope” like the jingoism of a political professional begging questions about his plans for the country. But the honest dreams of beautiful kids with futures.

“If one advances confidently in the direction of one's dreams, and endeavors to live the life which one has imagined, one will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.”
     - Thoreau

We’re All Boas on This Bus.

Bus-sized boa slithers into record books (from the British-based weekly science journal Nature)

PARIS (AFP) — Stunned scientists have found the fossilized remains of the world's greatest snake -- a record-busting serpent that was as long as a bus and snacked on crocodiles.

The boa-like behemoth, dubbed Titanoboa, ruled the tropical rainforests of what is now Colombia some 60 million years ago, at a time when the world was far hotter than now, they report in a study. The size of the snake's vertebrae suggest the beast weighed some 1.135 tonnes, in a range of 730 kilos (1,600 pounds) to 2.03 tonnes. And it measured 13 metres (42.7 feet) from nose to tail, in a range of 10.64-15 metres (34.6-48.75 feet), they estimate.

Jonathan Block, a vertebrate palaeontologist at the University of Florida, who co-led the work said “The snake that tried to eat Jennifer Lopez in the movie 'Anaconda' is not as big as the one we found."

"At its greatest width, the snake would have come up to about your hips," said David Polly, a geologist at the University of Indiana at Bloomington.

Ants from Mars, frogs the size of Border Collies, mine-sniffing rats, and all of a sudden a boa constrictor the size of a bus has scientists “stunned”?

We fret over Bernie Madoff, Joe the Plumber and Jessica Simpson’s waistline, while “stunned scientists” are uncovering the real treachery. It’s like one of those sci-fi movies from the fifties where only the little kid sees the giant cockroaches in the woods while the rest of the sleepy town mocks him on its way to the Fourth of July picnic. Sure, Hollywood told us, parade the flag down Main Street all you want – meanwhile the Soviets are poised to devour your children, America. Before you know it you’re up to your waist in 40-foot boa constrictors.

But the prize goes to vertebrate paleontologist Jonathan Block. It’s not enough for us to know the damn snake was the size of a bus. Jonathan has to tell us more about himself than we really need to know by comparing it to the snake that tried to eat Jennifer Lopez. Jonathan’s snake is bigger than that.

Good for Jonathan.

I'll Roger That!

Bless me father.

Are impure thoughts really still a sin? I am at the point where I welcome and celebrate almost any coherent thought. Must I confound it all with worry about my soul and all of eternity?

And is that really the standard? Impure? You don’t even have to get to fanciful, mischievous or lascivious or anything? Just saddle up your Ivory Soap thoughts (only 99.44 percent after all) and ride them straight to hell.

Anyways, this is all about car insurance, factual impossibility and  rabbits. There may be an age discrimination problem here too, but , . . .

When Snoopy started trying to sell me life insurance, I was good. Why would anybody buy life insurance from a cartoon beagle, however beloved? And disability insurance from a duck with Gilbert Gottfried’s voice? You’d have to be crazy. Geckos, cavemen, even Charo? No, no and no.

But this Erin Esurance babe has me reviewing my policy for all the wrong reasons I am sure.  I hate to seem shallow, but she's younger and perkier that Jessica, and probably more fun on a date. I Googled her and apparently I am not her first admirer -- certainly not her strangest admirer either, judging by the collections of "fan art" out there.  (She does look good naked.)

Today I heard her voice on the Country Music radio station.  For a moment I imagined that they took her into the studio, sat her down and had her read ad copy. And I am definitely hoping she comes through with something big on Super Sunday.

Now, where is the princess with the abscessed tooth?