Foal Training
The following item was found for sale at a fine virtual store:
Lowest price anywhere! This excited new method is the next step in foal training. Come watch one of the worlds premiere trainers, as he shows you how to get the same results in your barn as he does in his. VHS tape.
Now, the interesting point is that while it tells you the foal training method is excited, it doesn’t tell you what the method is. Or who the trainer is. Or even what he’s training the foals to do. From this end, it looks like they’re being trained to sit on beanbags. Which is such a bizzare occupation for a horse than even the neighboring horse is staring at them in disbelief through the stall window.
If only they had a DVD instead of a tape! I'd run right out and buy it. And then the next horse show I go to, I'd be asking at the show office where the beanbag sitting class is being held because I've got some blue ribbon winners!
Loquats
When we bought our house, it came with a weird looking fruit tree that had fuzzy yellow/orange fruit. Not an apricot, more citrus-y. It required the arborist to tell us it was a Loquat tree. Since he didn’t tell us much more than the name and that we weren’t going to die from eating the fruit, I went to that wonderful fount of information called the world wide web to find some more details. Not only did we discover that you shouldn’t fertilize trees with a herbicide, but I also found this gem:
Fruit of the Loquat Tree
Gus has a shelf in his study filled with found objects.
They glow in the south window,
they resonate in memory.
Gus has a grandson named
Jack Augustus.
He twirls a phrase like other children swing
tin pails at the beach.
Jack says
bop de bop de bop de bop.
This beat is coded in his genes.
Loquat, loquat.
How many varieties can there be
of fruit from this one loquat tree?
Marshal Will Kane turns back
from retirement
each semester. Gus asks his students
Can you hear it? Do you GET it?
There’s courage in this art,
no art without courage.
It’s always nearly noon,
ask Wen Ho Lee.
Loquat, loquat.
Bop de bop de bop de bop.
A friend from Socorro days asks me
are you related to Gus
by marriage?
Let’s skip a survey of the intervening decades
and turn to objects that glow in memory.
Gus taught a class there.
Are you related to Gus by
learning?
Loquat, loquat.
Bob de bop de bop de bop.
How many varieties can there be
of fruit from this one loquat tree?
Translate loquat from Mandarin: Rush Orange.
Pronounce its taxonomic name:
Eriobotrya japonica.
Follow it hanging in the western sky,
round burnt orange disk.
Follow it to the first tree
rooted in oriental earth, rooted in Adam’s memory.
Seeds from this one tree blew across oceans,
flowered in strange, distant worlds.
Can you hear the rhythm that carried these seeds?
Do you GET it?
Loquat, loquat.
Bop de bop de bop de bop
16 Sept 2000
Mark Ivey
http://tomraworth.com/loquat.htmNo, I don’t get it.
No furniture for you
We were out shopping for patio furniture at the store where Martha Stewart designer pink tools are replacing Craftsman red ones (ok, not yet, but that sad day is coming). They had a nice 6-seat set in Sunday’s ad and we wanted to see it. Sure enough, it’s sitting there in the store, on sale. And wonder of wonders, it’s actually even comfortable. So we called over the sales clerk and had the following conversation:
“We like this one. Are there any in stock?”
“No”
“Can we order one?”
“No. It’s last year’s model. The computer won’t let us.”
“Can we buy the floor model?”
“No”
“Um … thanks. Bye.”
Fat what?
Work recently consolidated buildings by moving people randomly into whatever cubicles were empty. This resulted in my group scattered amidst a group of (gasp) non-engineers. Suffice it to say that we don’t understand them and they don’t understand us. We just try to get along.
But we have some evidence that they’re loony by even non-engineering standards. The other day, one of them walked into the cubicle across from mine (a friend of hers), chanted “I don’t want her, you can have her, she’s too fat for me” in a sing-song voice, and walked out. End of conversation as far as I could tell.
WTF? I don’t know and somehow I’m not sure I want to know. Curiosity DID kill the cat after all.
Intellectual Entropy
Sometimes life is just too random to comprehend. Things happen that are so weird and off the wall that all you can do is stand there with a dazed look in your eyes and your jaw on the ground, thinking “what the hell?” Things that, on second thought, you really don't want to understand because the possible explanations are just too scary. Things that you tell friends about over dinner and they know you’re not making it up because NO one's story-telling skills are that good.
This blog is dedicated to all those random, bizarre, stupid, ridiculous, and flat out unbelievable events that life throws your way just to see if you’re actually paying attention.
