Oh, yes it is

Found on Flickr.

Missed photo op

Yesterday on the way into the office I passed a photogenic scene, but unfortunately I was unable to get a shot. A pidgeon was eating morsels of vomit from a fresh deposit a street person had made on the sidewalk. Every time I approached to take the shot, the pidgeon became skittish and hurried away, only to return as soon as I gave it some personal space. Thinking that a photo of the vomit without the pidgeon would lack artistic merit, I let the opportunity pass.

Just right

Once upon a time there were three bears who lived in a spacious upper middle-class home in the far suburbs. The mortgage was well beyond their means. As if that weren't enough, they felt they had to have two high-status automobiles so the neighbors would respect them. Both Mama Bear and Papa Bear had to work full-time to keep up the payments. This was really inconvenient when it came time for hibernation, and consequently the Bear family was rather cranky.

One day as Papa Bear was ripping through the neighbor's garbage, Ranger Dan approached him with an offering of porridge. The porridge was too hot, and it burned Papa Bear's sensitive lips. He tore out Ranger Dan's liver and ate him instead. This cheered Papa Bear up a bit, but alas his good cheer was destined to be short-lived.

Papa Bear took the rest of the porridge home with him later that day and gave it to Mama Bear. She tasted it and found it was too cold. She flew into a rage, which surprised Papa Bear although it shouldn't have since he would have known it was the last straw had he been paying attention to the relationship all these years instead of taking her for granted like some kind of Hausfraubär or something, strutting and pontificating and farting and heaving his disgusting deer-gut around the house. She dumped the porridge all over Papa Bear and pounced on him. Sitting on his chest to pin him to the floor, she roared and swiped at him with her razor-sharp claws once for each of the unforgiven disappointments she had been carefully cataloguing in her mind since their first date many years earlier. Then she gave him one extra for good measure and as advance payment for the next insult which she was certain would come before sundown.

It was to this unfortunate scene that Baby Bear returned from his daily rounds of terrorizing the neighborhood children and eating their pets. He comforted his mother and calmed her. She got off Papa Bear's chest and squatted down next to him. Baby Bear squatted across from her, on the other side of his father. He licked up some of the porridge from Papa Bear's filthy, matted (and now bloodstained) fur, and declared it was neither too hot nor too cold. Mama Bear sampled the porridge as well. The two of them agreed the warm blood had brought the food to the perfect temperature, and they tucked in. Papa Bear bled out slowly and died in great pain.

Mama Bear scolded Papa Bear for leaving a mess on the floor, and for being generally lazy. As she cleaned up the mess, she reminded him that she is not a maid or a slave, and that were she remunerated at standard union rates for all the work she did around the cave day in and day out she would be pulling down a cool $508,000 per annum. She interpreted his silence to mean he did not care, and did not respect her. She duly added the incident to her mental catalogue of injustices, and wondered how in the world she could ever have believed he had any potential to be molded into shape by the guiding hand of woman. She didn't know whether to feel embarrased by the mere fact of her association with him or bitter about having wasted her youth on him.

I am Gir!

Character	bar	percentage
Gir		100%
Professor Membrane		50%
Ms. Bitters		50%
The Allmighty Tallest		33%
Gaz		33%
Zim		17%
Dib		0%

Which Invader Zim Charecter are You?

Created with
QuizFarm.com

Traffic

Every day I am amazed afresh at the blistering speed with which traffic flows into and out of downtown Cleveland. Just this morning, I was compelled to take my car all the way to second gear on more than one occasion. At one point, the flow of traffic achieved a hair-raising speed of 14 miles per hour. That amounts to slightly more than 22.5 kilometers per hour, or mach 0.018391842.

I felt like an astronaut, on the verge of blackout as incredible G-forces pressed my body helplessly into the recesses of my acceleration couch. When I passed a sign that read, "Caution! 25 MPH zone ahead" I braced myself for a heart-stopping burst of speed. To my relief, the sign turned out to be somewhat optimistic. I'm not sure I could have survived much more excitement.

After standing on the clutch for just 110 minutes - a mere augenblick in geological time - I had traversed the 11 miles to my workplace. Dizzy and pumped with adrenaline from the stupendous rush of the journey, it was all I could do to settle down into the daily office routine.

Isn't there anything the authorities can do to slow things down so that people aren't overwhelmed with the thrill of rush-hour driving? Perhaps they could close a couple of lanes or install speed-bumps all along the freeway, or force everyone to drive backward. Anything to take the edge off.

Ohio is just one big ashtray

The density of cigarette butts along the edges of the roads in Ohio suggests they are placed there intentionally as a form of decoration.

Neither ear nor thear

There's this large electric ear cleaner in the men's room at our office. Very convenient for those with chronic ear wax build-up. Looks like someone went a bit deep, judging from the condition of the brush on the right-hand side.

Another man's treasure

We cleaned out the attic over our garage the other day. It was quite tedious. The previous owners of the house had kept every piece of scrap wood they ever cut. There were irregularly shaped pieces that were splintered or burned along the edges. There were long pieces of quarter-round that had been nearly shredded when they were removed from the walls. There was an old cardboard box filled with little triangular pieces cut from the ends of two-by-fours. Absurdly, the pieces were neatly arranged with the tops of the triangles pointing in the same direction.

With several hours' effort, we managed to stack the junk relatively neatly on our driveway to await the weekly garbage pick-up. We just could not believe anyone would keep such stuff. It was a fire hazard. It was a dust magnet. It was a waste of attic space. It was an attractive unfurnished rat condominium. It was dead weight on the garage ceiling. There was absolutely nothing that appeared to be remotely useful at all, and there was a lot of it.

The next day, a pickup truck rolled slowly by our house, turned around to make another pass, and finally backed to a halt at the end of our driveway. Two men got out. One of them perused the stacks of scrap wood and the other approached us humbly.

"Excuse me," he asked deferentially, "but were you planning to throw out that wood?"

"Why, yes, now that you mention it, we were, as a matter of fact."

The two men conferred quietly between themselves. Then: "We hate to impose, but we were wondering, since you were planning to throw out the wood anyway, if it might be possible for us to...to...?" The man looked down and shuffled his feet nervously.

"Take it?" I prompted.

He perked up. "Yes! Take it! We were hoping...er, wondering...whether we might just, you know, take the wood. Seeing as you were planning to throw it out anyway, of course," changing his tone to sound a bit more casual.

"Hmm," I replied, scratching my chin as if thinking it over.

"Uncle!" cried the other man suddenly, from down the driveway. "Look! There is a lovely antique cardboard box filled with little triangular pieces cut from the ends of two-by-fours. And they are all neatly arranged with the tops of the triangles pointing in the same direction!"

The older man drew in a sharp breath and his eyes welled with tears. He struggled to maintain his composure. In a voice trembling with hope, he asked once more: "Well...what do you think? Is it...is it possible we...we could..."

"Take it?" I prompted again.

Again he perked up. "Yes! Take it!" and suddenly, his shoulders slumped and he looked at his own feet, continuing in a more subdued tone, "That is, if it wouldn't be too much trouble."

"Hmm," I replied once more, once more scratching my chin as if thinking it over.

The two men shifted uneasily from foot to foot, gazing at me hopefully, their eyes reminiscent of the eyes of manga characters.

"Yeah, why not?" I said abruptly.

They were beside themselves with joy. Actually, they were beside each other with joy. In any case, they wasted no time in loading their truck with every useless scrap of wood in our driveway. They left in a festive mood, and we were also happy, because now we would not have to drag all that stuff to the curb on garbage day.

Pull down to insert packages

I saw a DHL box this morning. There is a hatch where you place packages to be delivered. The hatch is labeled, "Pull down to insert packages." It made me feel nostalgic. I remembered a girl from high school who had the same message embroidered on her panties.