Wednesday, March 22, 2006
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(Click photo to enlarge.)
Operator: "911, what is your emergency?"
Caller: "Big Boy is down. I repeat: BIG BOY IS DOWN!"
Operator: "I'm sorry, sir, can you be a little more specific? You fell down?"
Caller: "NO! BIG BOY IS DOWN! BIG BOY IS DOWN!"
Operator: " ... "
Caller: "IT JUST AIN'T RIGHT!!"
Operator: "Uh... Sir... Um... A large child is on the ground..?"
Caller: "Hell with you. I'm callin' a construction crew. THIS... IS... BAD!!"
*click*
Operator: " ... "
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EDITORIAL LETTERS TO LOCAL NEWSPAPERS...
Who knew how many people read them? And I mean read them, as in skip over the front page (and even the comics, my favorite part!) straight to the letters, which range from polite and informative to ridiculous to downright soap-opera squabbling. Anyway, I wrote one to the local Lake County News-Herald recently and they just happened to edit out the sentence that made it all make sense, the one sentence in which I pointed out that U.S. State Departments of Natural Resources/Departments of Wildlife (DNRs/DOWs) are funded by hunting licenses. The moral: NEVER exceed the word-limit for a letter, or you open yourself up to arbitrary editing by the newspaper.
But the editor was cool and let me send in an immediate clarification letter, so here it is below. The controversial topic: Parks opening up themselves for "controlled hunts" of turkeys, deer, etc. Some people claim it's "wildlife management." Bullshit.
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A recent editorial letter of mine was edited without my input, omitting one key sentence and confusing many people. In simple (unedited) bullet-points, this is what I said:
Hunting and lethal measures are ineffective wildlife "population control":
1. Killing animals = less animals/same amount of food/less competition for food = healthier remaining animals.
2. Healthier animals = higher reproductive rate and earlier ages at which conception occurs.
3. Therefore the population rebounds right back up.
4. Hunters kill millions of deer yearly in the U.S. with never any shortage of deer to kill. Now you understand why.
The real motive is profit:
1. The State Departments of Natural Resources (DNRs) and Departments of Wildlife (DOWs) maintain deer populations at high levels convenient to hunters.
2. "Sportsmen's" lobby groups, the NRA, gun/ammo manufacturers and the DNRs/DOWs justify hunting and lethal measures to the public as "population control" or sometimes as necessary control of "dangerous" or "nuisance" animals.
3. The DNRs and DOWs profit from the sale of hunting licenses, the NRA and gun/ammo manufacturers profit from the obvious, and "sportsmen" get to do what they enjoy: kill animals.
Another recent letter from a Mr. Parks of Kirtland claimed coyotes are killing deer in huge numbers and they'll soon be after our dogs and cats. I cannot contradict this inflammatory, ignorant nonsense about shy, elusive coyotes without laughing, and I'd love to see pictures of the mauled carcasses he claims to have found. Coyotes, like humans, are lazy animals, searching out the easiest food sources, usually mice and small mammals, trash, and fruit. Mr. Parks mentions a "hunting friend" of his so, obviously, he is a hunter. Case closed.
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Someone on MetaChat asked for best real-life nicknames today.
From my high school cross-country team:
-"Groin:" He had really curly hair.
-"Torch," a.k.a. "Snort": Torch got mad at a football player, torched opened the football player's gym locker and set fire to his clothes. Snort also snorted coke.
-"The Hobbit": He was very short, very polite, and had hairy feet. The Hobbit found an ancient black leather coat, so worn it was actually brown, and wore that for a while. His hair was long. During that period people called him "Snake" (and tried not to laugh.) Snake acted really mean and often made a ruckus at the local McDonald's. Snake was a very different person from The Hobbit and Snake only existed with the jacket on.
-"Big Mo": He was big and from Missouri.
Cross-country teams the world over are the same. Ask anyone who ran CC and they'll tell you crazy stories. I could write mine into a book. I SHOULD write mine into a book
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"It's A System"
I wear my shirts untucked so no one can see when I forget to zip up my fly. In engineering they call this a "failsafe." I think I'm just pretty damn sharp.
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I need to write more here.
I need to write more in general.
"More."
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(Click images to enlarge, if you like.)
Witch Battle Bitches!
I don't know why this graffiti struck me as so funny. Is it a gang tag or just a comment about very angry women? The letters turned out well considering the writer was, presumably, hanging upside down when s/he wrote them. Driving through Akron, OH, is like moving through some kind of reality warp, in and out of post-holocaust worlds.
Radiator circa 1921:
...from a little beat-up house I wish I could buy. It's the first steam radiator I've seen (in this lifetime) that's both functional and decorative.
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My new webpage is ugly as hell but I guess it gets the job done, kind of like a 3D business card. Suggestions are VERY welcome, as are notifications of any bugs (THANKS!) I suck at code, but I grabbed an open-source template and modified the HTML and CSS. I guess I'll link it here so Google picks it up.
I suppose I should link to the LOHVOH page that taz designed here too and get it better catalogued by Google. Content is forthcoming shortly.
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Bigfoot Looks Like Kenny Rogers. Separated at Birth?
(Click photo to enlarge.)
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Reminder to Self:
Remember these thoughts for future use. Write them down somewhere you can find them, not on napkins tossed in a shoebox in the closet. Post them someplace where no one will notice (or steal) them. Like your 'blog!
-I saw a crow and a dead groundhog together on the side of the highway and I thought, That's the great thing about Nature: At least the crow's happy.
Thoughts like that may seem callous, but it's all part of learning to accept and love Nature for what it is.
-Yesterday I got a big blotter calendar, a last resort to try to impose some sort of organization on my hurricane of a brain. Hey, that rhymes!: hurricane and brain. It's March (I think), so I pulled January and February off the calendar, big sheets of useless paper to be recycled. And I remembered when I was a child: Those sheets of paper would have been PRICELESS! They could be drawn on, becoming pictures, images the size of a mural to a little kid, maybe backdrops for a diorama of model dinosaurs or monsters or action figures. Or, more likely, GIANT PAPER AIRPLANES!
Things change when you grow up. Maybe they shouldn't.
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3/22/2006 09:03:00 AM
Monday, March 20, 2006
One of the many personalities who lives in my head:
-Woose (rhymes with Moose!) McGee, international man of mystery and adventure, after a few drinks. His accent varies and is indeterminate. After all, he has been around.
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3/20/2006 09:03:00 PM
Sunday, March 12, 2006
Hi there. I am, of late, (obviously) confused, though sometimes bemused, but not nearly so often amused as I once was by life.
I promise to post more once I get off this merry-go-round, from which all of the horses seem to have disappeared...
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3/12/2006 05:44:00 PM
