I believe the entire problem can be traced back to windows

I recently traveled through an old town established in the early 1800’s, and the first thing I noticed was the windows.                                           

                                    (See example below)

The people of the time had a very narrow view of things which I think explains why it took so many years for the population to see the end of slavery, the beginning of the woman’s right to vote and in general all of the much wider views we have of things today.

The moment building contractors started making windows wider people could see a lot more of their world.

I believe this explains things quite nicely.

Thank you

Itsy Bitsy - Case #65-4C

There was never a need for a line-up.  Nothing was ever in dispute.  The simple fact was: an ugly spider - spotted by the eye-witness was attempting to take up residence there in her bathtub.  Her scream alerted the only other person currently on the premises, an adult male, approximately 5’ 11”, 200 pounds.

Excessive force was never used; in fact, the Dyson has only one setting, which as it turns out, was more than sufficient to draw said perpetrator up – into the magic wand, sending him at great speed along the length of the hose and into the clump of awaiting dust, carpet fuzz, and cat hair.  Once there the impressive cyclone action kept him from escaping.

It was all over in less than a few seconds.  There were no on-lookers or gawkers to disperse, no traffic jams to speak of, and the evidence will show either Just Cause, or the less formal, Just B. Cause. 

Although the coroner report states the spider incurred several broken bones as a result of tumbling at high speed through the vacuum hose, the actual cause of death was listed as a severe allergic reaction to cat hair. 

 End of report

The distraught victim later told reporters, "This wasn't Itsy Bitsy."

 

Pop Quiz

It is times like this…

Had I known this before…

What I wouldn’t give…

Hungrier than a woodpecker with a headache…

 Those tests where you are to select the one thing that doesn’t match the others always start off easy and as you progress through the test it becomes increasingly more difficult to isolate the one thing that doesn’t belong.

And story problems - as a writer you’d think I’d like story problems but actually I don’t.  Come to find out they are nothing more than math problems disguised as cute, little stories with drab endings.

The math portion of my brain has always lagged a little behind the rest of my brain.  It’s like that 9/8 % of brain is actually handicapped, or numerically stunted.  By all rights I should be allowed handicap parking in front of all Math stores.

What in particular does testing really tell us?  A professor stands before his or her class and says, “You may begin.”

Heads look down and pencils go up, the room gets very quiet.

Some students will breeze right through the questions while others struggle with each one.  Some gaze off into the distance contemplating the importance of the #2.  Why is it always a #2 pencil?  From there their thoughts stray to pens and the mechanical actions that poke the ballpoint portion out for writing and in for storage within a shirt pocket.

Perhaps visions of some spreading blue stain on what was once a nice and fairly expensive dress shirt pop into their head, resulting of course from a failed pen mechanism.

It is somewhere during the mental image of the sewing required for the intricate shirt construction using the odd shaped pieces of material when the student hears, 

“Time’s up, pencils down.”

They have yet to put their name in the upper right-hand corner, let alone answer a single question.

What does this tell us?

A.             He or she is a daydreamer

B.              Not enough time was allowed for the test

C.              Shirts are hard to make

D.             Sometimes Life just hands you #2

Civil Disobedience

          Fortunately for all of us the body of this post has nothing to do with civil disobedience. I just happen to have that title left over from something else.  It’s been shuffled around for a while, laying here and there on my desktop; then it was put into the center drawer of my desk, but every time I wanted a mint or piece of gum I’d slide open the drawer and there – staring up at me - would be this title – Civil Disobedience.  It really was annoying so I said the heck with it and pasted it on the top of this post.

         And by the way, before you get your shorts in a bunch, NO, I do not chew gum or eat mints while typing to you.  That would be rude.

         I have been accused of many things but never of being rude.  In fact I am currently accused of something so out of character that it gives me some concern about the organization making the accusations.   

          Their employees are allowed to hide, tossing rocks out at those who happen to pass by and the innocent, like myself, are then left to hire attorneys and do battle with these unseen nitwits.

         OK, so maybe the word nitwit might seem a tad rude, but how do we fight stupid?  It is everywhere.  I believe there to be an ongoing epidemic of stupid and nobody seems alarmed.  We have just taken it in stride; “Yep, that’s stupid alright.”  We know it when we see it, it becomes quite obvious when we hear it, and yet it is allowed to continue.  Every country, in every language, and in every walk of life there is something very stupid.

         In my younger day I would have stood up and said something.  I would have painted a large sign and carried it up and down the sidewalk in hopes of shedding light on whatever it was that caused me to become so riled that I painted up a sign.  Well, you know what I mean.

         Now, at this age, I’d just be labeled.  The rock throwers would say I wasn’t a team player; they'ed suggest I have some hidden agenda or that I was simply an agitator.  The next thing you know someone would make the leap to civil disobedience.  Now THAT would be stupid.

            
         Hey, I just remembered why I had that title laying around.

I need some gum.

No Moving Parts

You have the easy part.  You come here looking, searching to see what’s been added, what’s new – what has he written now?  Has he taken any new photographs?

I, on the other hand, show up here to add new and exciting stuff – but what?  What will I think up next?  Can I write it so it is interesting?  Will it have substance, value?  Will it appeal to the masses or be aimed at a select few?  Will it be understood once it is read?

And what shall it be made of?  Surely it will not be plastic and hopefully it will have no moving parts.  We don’t want anything breaking half way through some paragraph leaving us with an incomplete thought or dangling participle. 

But then again, I cannot afford to construct sentences from stainless or copper.  That’s just crazy. 

I have seen those Hollywood types just make stuff up, as if it’s always existed and I was the dolt for not being aware of it.   Things like Unobtainium.  And on rare occasions they don’t even identify what it is - they just come up with some elusive gibberish like:

“It’s the stuff dreams are made of.”

Now I ask you, how lazy is that?

Another consideration is its feel.  Will it be light and fluffy, or perhaps dark and sinister?  And don’t forget creepy.  No, forget that, I hate creepy.  I just can’t picture myself writing something creepy.  Now I’m even tired of saying the word creepy.

More than likely it will be more of my middle-of-the-road stuff.  Take no chances, don’t get too edgy.  We certainly don’t wish to offend anyone.  After all, we need to remember the basic philosophy of this blog.

 Hey – That’s it.  That’s what I’ll come up with today, the philosophy of this blog.

Okay, here goes…

          This blog shall not be motivated by ratings.  No advertising shall appear along the top, sides, bottom, or even on the back side of your monitor.  Any and all punctuation will be random at best.  Your call is not important to us so hang up now and get on with your life.  We hope that doesn’t offend you.  We do not run coupons, specials or give discounts for any reason.  This blog is free and considered a bargain at twice that.  OK, this is sounding more like a disclaimer or something other than a philosophy.  Maybe will just keep our philosophy short and simple.

  No moving parts.

  Zobostic Corwin

 

(I'm sorry but that's not really a philosophy)

I don't know what it was - it flew through the air, and it had substance - so it was an object.

On a clear night I find myself looking up at the stars.  I stare and stare, hoping to see a sign, some indication of intelligence, or movement or even a UFO,

Of course all I see are the stars twinkling back at me.  The more I look the more stars I eventually see. 

I am also trying to imagine all of the various possibilities of what I might see at any moment and would I be able to explain it to anyone else and not sound like a nut case in the process.

Only once did I witness something and fortunately someone was with me at the time so I didn’t have to convince anyone else that I wasn’t crazy because we both saw it.

It was a warm, summer night and we were walking to the end of our street and back for our daily exercise.  As we walked a green light flew over our heads.  It was several yards up, didn’t make a sound and had come from behind us so we never saw it coming.  It was not quite as big as a basketball.  It was traveling in the same direction we were going and like I say, it was just over the height of the tree tops.  It never slowed down and it disappeared from our line of sight beyond the trees at the end of the road.

To this day we have no idea what it was, we just know that it was going very fast, it was completely silent and we’ve never seen it again.  We never heard any reports about it and never saw it land.

It is not your typical UFO story.  It wasn’t shaped like a saucer, we didn’t get any poor quality, grainy pictures and until this post, we’ve not really talked about it.

Something was making it light up a bright green color, something was causing it to fly and quite fast and whatever technology it had made no noise.

It was exciting to see it, and even now, several years later, I remember it clearly, but that doesn’t seem to be what I look for in the night sky.  I have a feeling that I will see something far greater than just some mystery ball of light.  I can’t put my finger on it, I just know that if I watch long enough, at the right time and in the right direction, I will catch sight of something grand; something amazing.

I hope, like the last time, someone is with me when I see it.  It will just make everything so much easier. 

#$^@*!!

 

MAD COW

Somewhere between here and the curb

We don’t automatically become cynical when we get old; it is a learned and slowly developed attitude that is established through repetitiveness.  It is a systematic dismantling of that which we were taught as children; old behaviors replaced by new as a result of frustrating and disappointing experiences.

As children our spark is strong and we experience some sensation of unity in our fight to make sense of it all.  We exist in a world that spins very close to right and wrong on a daily basis.  We are continually immersed in the educational process of what is acceptable behavior, in the classroom, on the playground and at home.  Our wonder years become saturated with ethics, and expectations and we grow into young adults who are expected to go to war to fight for these very principles.  

Growing into our own we shed most of that child-like feeling of unity.  We’ve become the adult, the educator and respected citizen.  We’ve become responsible.

Our spinning world, however, is no longer close to right and wrong.  We have been distanced from it and the part we once played in it is now being done by someone younger, fresher and stronger.  The unfortunate reality is that our replacements are still in the learning phase, so our daily experiences and interactions are now with the inexperienced and undeveloped. 

The person bagging my groceries is doing it wrong.  The lady at the social security office lied to me, the cable company is charging me more every time I turn around, and each thing I do, each interaction becomes a fight, a struggle to get closer and back to what is right.  Our spark, however, is weak and our patriotic flag waving no longer hides the realities.  The wrongness appears widespread and is reinforced through the bungling and moronic behaviors portrayed by television families.

If any solution exists it does so, hopefully, just short of throwing it all away and starting over.  The evolution of a society is like the slow-motion blossoming of a flower, it is not sculpted by its members.  It has its own DNA and we are not privy to the end result, but we are subjected to the growing pains.  These pains are seen through the eyes of the aged and well seasoned; those who talk of how things used to be, of the good ole’ days.  And it is witnessed by those who have given up, who don’t see a potential flower at all but rather a weed needing to be picked and set out on trash day.

Johnson & Johnson

The room we had on the cruise ship was right at, if not just below, the water line of the ship.  We could clearly hear the waves crashing against the side of the hull.  It made us very aware of the ocean.

Mentally I was imagining all of the odd and creepy creatures living just on the other side of the wall; the wall that in this case served as our headboard.  Quickly dropping off to sleep was not going to be easy.

One of the things I chose to think about in order to get my mind off of the massive ocean being just inches from my pillow was just how much money we had saved up to put ourselves in this situation. Turns out those thoughts weren’t comforting either.  The more I try to get my mind off of what makes me nervous the more I seem to come up with things that are worse.

         

I tend to do the same thing when I have to fly someplace.  Sitting on a plane I immediately run down a mental checklist of everything that has to go absolutely right for the plane to not only get off the ground but to remain in the air throughout the entire flight.

The airplane mechanic installing the replacement part on the engine has to make sure he is using the right part, the part itself needs to not be defective, he needs to use the right amount of torque when tightening the nuts and bolts holding the thing in place; the inspector coming along behind him needs to check it, and not loosen it in the process, and also check to see that the mechanic’s elbow didn’t accidentally knock something else out of whack while he was working.

The pilot and crew need to be physically and mentally fit; each and every passenger needs to not be a lunatic and whatever they have brought in their luggage needs to not react violently to changes in pressure.

The list goes on and on and in much more detail than I’ve mentioned here.  Millions of things need to be completely right for everything to work as it should. 

            It isn’t that I believe my destiny is to fall from the sky or go down with a sinking cruise ship, but I do think when my end does come it will be from something really stupid; something simple and obviously unforeseen. 

 

Hopefully not this.

        For this to go perfectly - the banana growers as well as the shoe manufacturers have to, well wait, before we start there, the farms where the cows were raised - providing the leather for the shoes...

       No, we need to start with the janitor who polishes the floor and we definitely need to look at the chemicals that went into his choice of floor wax.

       Did the chemist test Zylophoamamate 18 against banana oil,
and if so - under what amount of pressure?  Was it an evenly applied pressure or a sliding pressure?

       If he used a squishometer - was it calibrated?



 

I would not have guessed that

            I’ve never understood which is uptown and which is downtown.  As you read this you might think this is some lame Seinfeld skit, but it is not.  I’ve really never known.

            “Hey, let’s go uptown and catch a movie.”  Sounds the same to me as,

            “Hey, anyone want to go downtown and see a film?”

            Of course to the casual observer right off they’d say movies are uptown and films are downtown.  Films being more sophisticated than movies suggests perhaps downtown is the biggest city to your current location, while uptown could indicate a smaller town in a suburban area.  

            Then again it depends on who is speaking.  If it is a police officer with his hand grasping your arm saying, “I’m taking you downtown.” The odds are you’re not headed to the suburbs.   However, should it be a federal agent - he or she might say, “OK, we’re going uptown.”

            Furthermore, the suggestion that downtown draws or attracts more sophistication is based upon ticket price.  Movie stars flying in to do a show will go where the largest crowd can gather so the most money can be generated. 

            It stands to reason that the more people you have in a concentrated area, like a big city, the more you’re likely to draw them into an arena, thus generating larger sums to attract the movie stars to begin with.

            This does not suggest that arenas cannot also be found within a close proximity to an uptown.  So I’m not sure how this works.

            There could possibly be some connection between physical locations and actual directions, like downtown is always south of your present location and uptown is always north.

            Although the South side of Chicago is still considered part of the big city but from where you are is it uptown or downtown?

            I think I will take a break at this point and just look it up in the dictionary.  One moment please, I’ll be right back.

 

 

      OK, so forget everything I just said.

Actual photo

Not photo-shopped or altered

I just love having my camera with me.

Sock Monkey Snow Angel

 

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Next week - Warning Labels.  

  

  

Resignation

You see it on the faces in the aisles of the super market, the ones blankly staring at the rows of cans, boxes and jars as they push against the shopping cart - going about their day having no fight left in them.

You find it in the expressions at the bus stop as they dig into their change purse, or as they hang on for dear life to the trolley as it clangs through their day; their lives no longer carrying the spark they once had, their ability to reach up and pull the cord is now just too much of an effort so they just keep riding.

          It is in the eyes of the politician whose bill was defeated and he wonders once again why he even bothers.

          At some point we simply give up the fight, we drop our guard and let life punch away at us.  The corruption is too wide spread, the apathy in those around us too contagious.  It is not that you can’t fight city hall, it’s the realization that city hall is simply comprised of more indifference.

          Eventually we allow ourselves to be railroaded.  We see others lying about us for no other reason than to make themselves appear better.  It is wrong but it is how people treat people and there is no end to it. 

          This, of course, is no startling revelation.  If you’re paying attention at all you see it every day.  One of its causes is our own government taxing us far beyond that which sparked the revolution against England so many years ago.

          We broke off and started our own country believing we could do it better only to discover that greed, arrogance, and jealousy is not something from which you can escape.   We take our baggage with us.

          We pack it neatly in our suit case, folding our aggression, rolling up our animosities and tucking them into a corner.  We iron the wrinkles out of our fabrications being sure to keep each story straight before we squeeze them into the bag.

          We are, after all, taking a trip through adulthood, all the while trying to teach our children right from wrong.