Category Archives: Random Neuron Firings

Obsessive? Nah.

This is my neighbor Nancy’s silver maple tree. It’s beautiful, and, as you can see, huge. (Click the photo for a larger view.)

It towers over both of our back yards and our shared driveway. In the fall, it sheds its multi-colored leaves and creates a blanket of gold, orange, red, brown and yellow. It’s really a fabulous tree.

This spring, for the first time in the 3 years we’ve lived in our present house, the maple began to grow its special fruit, which I have always called its helicopter seeds. You know, the ones that look like this:

Well, of course, the helicopters fell, as they always do, and created a thick carpet in our back yard. There were thousands of them, literally. You could barely see the grass.

Why is this “obsessive,” you ask?

Wait for it…………

Wait…………..

It’s obsessive, because only my husband would get out the Shop Vac and vacuum them all up. Every last one of them. It took him 5 hours.

I am not making this up.

Obsessive? Eh, maybe. But since he is the coolest of the cool, and because he takes care of everything around here so I don’t have to worry about it, and he anticipates the entire family’s needs, and makes sure I have everything I require before I ever ask for it, and he does all that as well as taking care of his own business…he’s allowed.

Fink out.

100

Yes, friend. Today is my 100th blog post since beginning this little labor of love back in February. A momentous occasion indeed. Please send chocolate.

Some of you (OK, probably like 3 of you) read me every day, and for that I should send you chocolate.

Anyway, to celebrate this milestone, I figured I’d do something with the number 100. The following is my second choice, given that asking for $100 from each of my readers would likely end in disappointment. Therefore, I have collected some facts about life in America 100 years ago (give or take a year).

In 1908…

  • The entire population of Las Vegas: 30.
  • Marijuana, heroin and morphine were all available over the counter at local drug stores.
  • You could buy a dozen eggs for 14 cents.
  • A 3-minute telephone call from Denver to New York City cost $11.
  • Coca-Cola contained cocaine.
  • Most women washed their hair once a month. Nice.
  • Ninety percent of US doctors had no formal college education.
  • Average life expectancy: 47 years. Holy carp, I’d be dead.
  • There were more deaths from lynchings than from automobile accidents.
  • The Theodore Roosevelt administration created the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
  • Congress voted in the first Worker Compensation law for men hurt on the job.
  • The Ex-Lax Company is formed in New York City.
  • Albert von Tilzer wrote “Take Me Out to the Ball Game.”
  • The Cubs won the World Series. Heh.
  • Kate Mulcahey was arrested in New York for smoking in a restaurant — but not because it was illegal to smoke in public places like it is today. It was just illegal for women to smoke in public places.
  • The J. I. Case Company began selling gasoline-powered tractors.
  • The skin test for tuberculosis is produced. At the time, TB was the #2 killer of Americans. (Influenza and its resultant pneumonia was #1 on the list.)
  • Henry Ford built the first Model T.
  • Women competed in the Olympics for the first time.
  • A guy named Tom Selfridge became the first person to die in a plane crash. The pilot, Orville Wright, survived.
  • William Howard Taft (R-Ohio) was elected president in November 1908. He weighed over 300 lbs. Heavy.

Today is my last day of school with students in attendance. Everyone will celebrate. Yippy!

Fink out….for the hundredth time.

I must say…

….WikiHow is freaking awesome.

But on to more serious matters. As you know, I really like to find out stuff. Research makes me happy. I sometimes wonder how I find the goodies that end up on my screen, but I do enjoy running across it all. I highly doubt I’ll ever run out of pages to look at. Consider this:

J’ever think about how many pages there are on the web now? According to domaintools.com, there are, as of last night, 103,005,661 active domains on the internet. Ok, so exactly how big a number is 103 million? Say you wanted to count to one million. Saying one number per second, non-stop for eight hours a day, seven days a week would take you slightly longer than a month. Yikes.

And that’s just domain names – it doesn’t take into account the number of pages within each domain. We’re talking exponential here, friend. My brain doesn’t work like that, so I’ll leave this subject alone.

Recently, I heard about a student who was not allowed to do a report on a certain musician because he (the musician, not the student) was a drug user, and therefore not an acceptable contributor to society. Because I always want to help students everywhere, I will now suggest a few other historical figures about whom to write instead:

  1. Thomas Edison. Uh…cocaine user. Scratch that.
  2. W. A. Mozart. Whoopsy. Alcohol abuser.
  3. Sigmund Freud. Cocaine addict. Nevermind. (Actually, the guy was a wackjob without the dope.)
  4. Robert Louis Stevenson. Ah, nuts. Scratch him, too. Wrote The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde in its entirety, in six sleepless days and nights, on a coke binge. Worthless slacker.
  5. L. van Beethoven. Dang. See #2.
  6. Ted Kennedy. Prescription drug addict. Sorry, luv.
  7. Admiral Horatio Nelson. Most famous of all British Navy commanders. He was honored as …. wait. Forget that. Opium addict.
  8. Edgar Allen Poe. Nope. Opium. Probably never wrote anything worthwhile.
  9. Winston Churchill. Don’t waste your time. Loser was a barbiturate junkie.
  10. Benjamin Franklin. Snap. Another opium user. Musta been a dummy.

Well then. That ought to do it. Glad I could help.

[I do get all ate up with the smart-aleck once’t in awhile. Got me in trouble quite often with the parental units, as I recall. I know. It’s a character flaw. I’ll work on it.]

Have a nice Thursday.

They Call Me Sarcasmo

RNF III

Random Neuron Firings

  1. I think we’d have fewer incidents of insubordination at school if teachers were still allowed to bash a kid up against a locker once in awhile. A little healthy fear is good. Bring back the good old days of the assistant principal with the alligator arms patrolling the hallways and keeping order via extreme prejudice.
  2. Teachers will never be treated as educated professionals so long as they are affiliated with the AFL-CIO.
  3. My fingers and neck are screaming after I played an hour-long rehearsal last night on violin. Ouchy.
  4. Franklin Gutierrez is the cutest player on the Indians roster.
  5. My friend D lost a pillow sham in her house, and it was right in front of her face the whole time. Heh. Glad someone else does that besides me.
  6. As much as I liked (almost) all my seniors, I’m glad they’ve graduated and moved on. I’m already looking forward to what my singers are going to do next year.
  7. I love Pinwheel cookies. Don’t you?
  8. I’m still mad that they canceled The 4400. Really mad.
  9. It’s a sad day when my 6th and 7th graders rave about the latest R-rated movies they’ve seen.
  10. I have four more days of school. Four.
  11. It’s Wednesday morning, and I have yet to begin the 90-page reading assignment I have to discuss on Friday.
  12. Tesla was framed.
  13. I am sick to death of wearing my wool winter coat when it’s almost June.

Funny? I think so.

But first – NEWS FLASH!

Prepare yourself………..

Wait for it………..

You can do it…………

Wait…………………..

Ready? Here goes.

Another professional athlete has been charged with a violent crime. But wait, wait wait! Don’t get upset. Don’t get up. It’s just manslaughter. Saints DE Charles Grant immediately posted bond, so he’s not in jail. Nor will he likely ever be. Thank God, Jesus, Mary, Buddha, the NFL, and really boss defense lawyers.

On to today’s clever grist.

Let me first say that I am no fan of the LA Times (or the New York Times, for that matter), for reasons that don’t really matter. But yesterday I ran across an opinion column written by Joel Stein of the Times. Loved it. It was actually quite funny. Truth be told, I wondered if I liked him because I recognized a bit of my own writing style in his. Is that a terribly vain thing to say? I don’t know. I’m older, so I say the writing style should belong to me. In fact, I should have his job. But I digress.

After I read one of his blog posts, I looked at a bunch of his other stuff and loved it all. You should read him.

Anyway.

His column included advice for celebrities on how to avoid the paparazzi — from the paparazzi themselves. He then spins it into something quite silly, but at the same time, gives it an odd ring of truth:

Go out early: Do your errands before 11 a.m. because, as you know if you’ve ever seen paparazzi, there’s no way they’re awake before 11. And make dinner reservations before 8, because there’s a window between 5 and 8 p.m. when they’re doing their equivalent of office work: uploading video, sending photos, killing puppies.

Don’t go to the Ivy for lunch:* Sure, the Cobb salad is good — but are you completely unable to find a salad at a less tourist-packed, paparazzi-stalked joint? If you’re going to the Ivy for lunch, you want your photo taken. This is the place where Melanie Griffith went with sudden-friend Sharon Stone last week in what will rank as the most desperate plea for sexual attention from a 50-something until whatever Kim Cattrall does in the “Sex and the City” movie.

Hire security: …Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes…are among the hardest celebrities to get pictures of….Cruise’s SUV has a dividing wall and window curtains. Also, he can melt film with his mind.

And the best piece of advice: Wear a burka. Heh.

* I’m thinking that isn’t the kind of free publicity the owners of the Ivy restaurant had in mind.