Fools and Idiots

Accosted

2008-05-05T12:49:00.000-07:00

A co-worker and I were sitting on a park bench on a sunny afternoon in Prague recently, having a conversation and generally minding our own business, when an older gentleman walked up to us and asked (VERY politely in heavily accented but impeccable english) if he could possibly interrupt us for a minute. He explained that he's had a translation question on his mind and, being a precise sort of person, he would like to ask a native speaker exactly how to say this one thing.

Now, this did strike me as an excuse for him to engage in a conversation with an animate being who might actually talk back. But I am the person who spent years (pre-google) tracking down why the abbreviation for Switzerland is "CH" rather than "SW" or any other much more sensible thing, so I can appreciate the tantalizing hope of finally answering one of life's mysterious questions. So I smiled and nodded encouragingly only to have to try DESPERATELY to not turn purple with suppressed laughter when he finally got the question out:

"What exactly do you call the hill that ants build and live in?"

If only!

2008-01-23T17:45:00.000-08:00

The following was quoted this morning in a discussion at work on improving efficiency:

“We will not put into our establishment anything that is useless”

If only!

And the hip bone is connected to the arm bone?

2007-09-19T22:26:00.001-07:00

Author's note: admittedly this is a little outside the normal topics for this blog since there aren't any fools or idiots involved. However, it was deemed to qualify on the strength of sheer bizzareness.

About an hour southeast of Prague is a little town that had one of the earliest Catholic churches in the area (the Sedlec Ossuary in Kutna Hora). The Abbot made a pilgrimage to the holy land in about 1300 AD, bringing back some dirt from Golgatha which he sprinkled on the cemetery. For you heathens out there, this means the cemetery was now by extension holy ground itself. So everyone and his brother wanted to be buried there. Literally.

Fast forward several hundred years and the little church cemetery had the bones of approximately 40,000 people and was in a serious real estate crunch. Some bright monk got the idea to use them to decorate the lower chapel for an object lesson in the impermanence of life. They've been rearranged a couple of times since then, not to mention bleached and white washed, but the concept remains. As with so many such things, no words can describe this so I offer pictures instead.

And the most bizzare part about the whole thing is that as gruesome as the whole concept is and as freaky as the pictures are, when you're there in person there's just a sense of macabre splendor, rightness, and even peace. Despite the ticket takers and all the tourists with their cameras, this IS a holy place.

Filial Love

2007-06-17T18:31:00.000-07:00

"I decided that for father's day this year I'd buy my dad something other than ammunition"

I leave the context to your imaginations. Rest assured it was a real conversation I had (although it's not my quote).

Happy Father's Day all!

Vindication!

2007-04-20T09:49:00.000-07:00

This is for all of you who laughed at me for my fixation with Japanese toilets and their myriad of buttons. I told you they were scary!

From Gizmodo.com:
The Strange Case of the Exploding Toilets: Japan on High Alert
Toto, purveyors of a-cut-above bathroom accessories are in deep doo-doo. Toilets from their Z range, which feature a pulsating massage spray, a power dryer, and a "Tornado Wash" flush, have been bursting into flames in the company's home market of Japan.

According to a company spokesman, nobody was using the toilets when the fires broke out, and there were no injuries—although it could have been very nasty indeed. "The fire would have been just under your buttocks," she added. Imagine the carnage if, while perched atop one of the flamers, some unlucky person had chosen that moment to unleash a mighty fart.

Although just three loos have been affected, Toto is taking no chances, and is recalling all 180,000 of the Z models, which were manufactured between May 1996 and December 2002. – Ad Dugdale

Free repairs to flammable toilets [BBC News}

Headers

2007-01-22T08:42:00.000-08:00

The theory is that a roomful of monkeys typing randomly will eventually reproduce a great work of fiction. I'm not sure about that, but it obviously doesn't take very many monkeys to create an email subject line guaranteed to make me laugh. Some of my recent favorites:

It mangel be euphemism
Entrails regimen
Stoic eggplant
Hi beer!

"Life is falling down seven times, getting up eight"

2006-12-09T21:02:00.000-08:00

Overheard at an ice rink:

2006-12-04T22:11:00.000-08:00

"The ice is so slippery!"

No, I do not make these things up.

Romance, XDirtPushr Style

2006-10-15T20:16:00.000-07:00

"Oh thank you! I have a present for you too. I found you something in the box of hazardous waste crap."

Happy MIPA* Day!

2006-10-09T16:00:00.000-07:00

* Massacre of Indigenous Peoples of the Americas

When pets meet

2006-10-02T21:54:00.000-07:00

Out of the mouth of babes

2006-09-21T20:42:00.000-07:00

"I'm sorry. I can't shake your hand with my fencing hand."

Said by a 13 year old as he awkwardly proferred his left hand.

Caution: Falling house parts

2006-09-15T08:43:00.000-07:00

The neighbors are in the process of leveling their house and starting over. Since this involves removal of both their chain link fence AND the minty fresh green house color, we were ecstatic when they told us. But we're having second thoughts now, fearing that the property will be declared an international red cross disaster zone. The demolition crew rolled in this week, complete with crowbars, sawzalls, and other assorted implements of destruction. The roof was the first to go, getting tossed over the side into the waiting dumpster in large chunks. Overheard at about lunch time:

zzzzzzzzz (powertool hum)
CRACK!
thud, thud, thud, BOOOOOOOM!
OOOOOOOOOOWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
...
Oops. Sorry. Were you down there?

Reality Bites

2006-09-05T15:58:00.000-07:00

bazilsmom: are men really that stupid?
eponasluv: yes
bazilsmom: oh
eponasluv: you had to ask that?

An Ode to a Grecian Urn

2006-08-02T08:55:00.000-07:00

Glaucoma Hymn

Glaucoma, Glaucoma, Glaucoma
Constricting vision slowly
Halted by progress of science
Vision of a world united
Beyond all science knowing

Click here to hear the audio track and see the bobbing heads

Here kitty, kitty

2006-07-21T08:54:00.000-07:00

While checking out at the grocery store last night, a small plump elderly woman with steel gray hair, a rolling shopping bag, and a very worried look on her face came hurrying into the store through the exit door. Talking to the air in general and no one in particular in a voice too soft to carry far, she asked if anyone had seen her knitting.

"Has anyone found my knitting in the store? I've lost my knitting"

She walked over to the checkout counter. "Is that my knitting? I've lost my knitting. Is that it? Is that it? Is that my knitting?"

She looked through all the empty bags stacked on the counter, then bent down to peer at every shelf "Is that it? Is that my knitting?"

She walked towards the aisles, continuing the refrain. "I've lost my knitting. I have to find my knitting. I've lost my knitting."

After 5 minutes (during which we all try very hard with very little success to not burst out laughing), she came back with a beaming smile, brandishing a bulky plastic bag. "I've found my knitting. I found it. It was in the aisle. I found my knitting."

If only other, perhaps more important things, were so easily found as well.

The end is near

2006-07-21T08:13:00.000-07:00

The concept that large civilizations naturally come to an end at some point is not particularly new, and not even really debated. What exactly the signs of impending doom are and how soon it might occur are the controversial parts. I don't claim to be an expert, but I have to admit to seeing signs that I think imply the end is near. The most obvious is that society is becoming so wealthy in material goods that luxury ... no, decadence has become not just common place, but expected.

Case in point - I actually got a lecture for feeding my horse whole apples. Not only were these apples windfalls (ie, they had bruises, small worm holes, etc), but *gasp* I hadn't cored and sliced them! Horrors! (I peeked at this woman's own apples out of disbelief - yes, all neatly cored and sliced. Not peeled at least, but stored in an airtight container so they didn't turn brown) And to compound my animal abuse, I gave him water from the hose spigot instead of bottled mountain spring water!

Is this what too much money and free time does to you? Causes you to completely lose touch with the reality that the rest of the world has to face on a day to day basis? Or am I, with my watertight roof, clean bed, and full refrigerator (not to mention horse), so underprivileged and poor that I'm ingesting things that even an animal shouldn't have to eat? Yes, I eat apple cores and drink from the spigot myself.

Disillusionment

2006-07-10T09:48:00.000-07:00

Last night I came face to face with a gaggle of 14 year old teenage girls trapped in the bodies of 50 year old women. I do realize that I'm the idiot/fool here, to have expected maturity to come with age, but it was still something of a shock to suddenly be plunged back into middle school. Like waking up abruptly from a nap on the beach because some imp dumped a bucket of ice cold ocean water over my sun-warmed back, I was suddenly jolted out of my fantasy world and faced with a circle of avid, malicious, judgemental faces again. Just as petty and disturbing, but with more wrinkles now.

No wonder this world is on the verge of self-annihilation.

Dog "Treats"

2006-07-05T16:43:00.000-07:00

Math 101

2006-06-27T08:36:00.000-07:00

Overheard recently, in a department that really ought to know better:

"Now enter 24 times 5 in that field"
" 'times' - that's the asterisk, right?"

Oh my.

Can you believe that?

2006-06-14T15:15:00.000-07:00

Overheard in a bulk grocery store:

"YES! He actually took his new wife to Rome! Brandon Scofeld, the man who wouldn't even take me to Nebraska! Can you believe that?"

Knowing what I think about the relative merits of Nebraska and Rome, and looking at the speaker, yes. For some odd reason, I can believe that.

Spam

2006-05-19T08:20:00.000-07:00

By now we all know we're related to some Nigerian king who only wants us to have our inheritance before he dies. And we're all used to emails whose subject lines promise us wonder pills and long lost friends and solutions to banking problems we didn't know we had. I guess spammers are being forced to be more creative - or more obvious as the case may be. What would POSSIBLY convince me to open an email with the following subject line, except maybe sheer disbelief?

"I'm young, online and nude"

Stepping Stones?

2006-05-16T09:08:00.000-07:00

Found for sale (as stepping stones) at a local salvage yard. The buttons are a mere $50 a piece, but the tuffits will run you $56. I wonder just how many critters of the 4 and 6 legged varieties would think a tuffit is a good home?

Fiction

2006-03-29T15:00:00.000-08:00

It's hard to make up something as random and bizzare as reality.

Too much luxury

2006-01-25T11:11:00.000-08:00

Somone was selling several Coach bags on an internal mailing list recently. The description came complete with this note:

"When we purchased the Lexus RX300, with a deluxe coach leather interior, the purse and duffle came as part of the interior package."

All I can say is that if I bought something so overpriced and useless that it came with not just one but two overpriced leather bags, I don't think I would advertise this fact.

Fashion

2006-01-12T14:20:00.000-08:00

I've long known that fashion makes no allowances for such minor considerations as comfort and warmth (how else do you explain pantyhose?), but I've always thought that fashion designers retained some basic rudiments of common sense. Last night, in the skiwear department, I was proven wrong. Horribly, dismally wrong. One simple phrase for your consideration: low rise snow pants. They look good, I'll admit that. But when you lean over, they form a gaping hole down the small of your back that simply *begs* for a snow ball. Staring at it on my own back in the dressing room mirror with no snow in sight, I STILL felt the insidious impulse. There is just no way I can reasonably expect my friends to resist the temptation (I bought bib pants instead - much safer all around).

Geography 101

2005-11-29T10:40:00.000-08:00

From one of our wonderful airlines - perhaps it's no wonder that they're bankrupt if they can't even figure out what Europe's capitals are:

Europe on Sale from $315* R/T

Take advantage of these incredible winter deals to Europe. Immerse yourself in European culture with castle tours and haute cuisine. Choose from our flights to Europe’s capitals: London, Paris, Amsterdam and Frankfurt - on sale for a limited time. Book your tickets now - this sale ends December 6th.

Your tax dollars at work

2005-11-03T14:36:00.000-08:00

Interested in the wonders of the Beerbrella and the Wonder Butt Bra? This one handy dandy website lists them all!

http://www.totallyabsurd.com/archive.htm

And yes, apparently they are all real US patents.

Yum

2005-10-18T21:53:00.000-07:00

Great big globs of greasy, grimy gopher guts
Mutilated monkey meat
Little turtle's stinky feet
French fried eye balls in a pan of grease

...

and me without a spoon

Urgent tip!

2005-09-15T16:40:00.000-07:00

ADVISORY!
New Orleans, Biloxi, and other areas in the Gulf Coast region were hit by Hurricane Katrina on August 29, 2005. Both roads and hospitality infrastructure suffered severe damage. For more information on area road closures, click here.

(AAA website advisory on Sept 15. If I haven't seen the news in the last month, am I really going to see their advisory?)

gee ... really?

2005-08-30T12:40:00.000-07:00

You know how you can be watching tv, half asleep and not really paying attention? So I'm not entirely sure I heard this correctly. But I think there was an ad for a sleeping aid that listed one of it's side effects as "drowsiness". Um ... just why do you think you're taking the pill in the first place?

Gluttony

2005-08-11T05:08:00.000-07:00

XDirtPusher and I recently celebrated another anniversary of not murdering each other by treating ourselves to what we consider the best restaurant in town. It's a French place that serves umpteen little tiny courses and yet we always leave so full that our stomachs are groaning. This time was no exception - in fact, this time could be considered the true epitome of gluttony.

They had a new feature on the menu - "menu degustation" (or is that "disgusting"?) It's basically the chef's choice. You have no idea what you're going to get, but you know it's probably going to be fantastically good. And we decided to go for the chef's choices of wine as well. Hey, if you're going to splurge, you might as well do it right (we'd cleverly walked to the restaurant so there was no danger of being stopped by Mr. Policeman on the way home - at least for a DUI).

What we didn't realize was that this went FAR beyond the "simple" 7 course dinner we'd previously considered insane. At some point I actually started to feel guilty that there were doubtless starving people in China and I was so full my stomach hurt. But we kept eating and drinking anyway. Just to give you an idea, here's the menu as best as we remember it. As you read it, picture the waiter with the obligatory starched white napkin over his arm describing the courses as he sets the elaborately arranged plates in front of you with all pomp and circumstance:

1 - cherry tomato and prosciutto drizzled with 25 year old balsamic vinegar and set on top of a slice of watermelon

2 - lobster carpaccio and radish slices in a lemon sauce

3 - tuna sashimi on a bed of ripe watermelon, with a topping of caviar and Japanese lime

4 - Dungeness crab flavored with lemon and mandarin orange, wrapped in cucumber and daikon radish

5 - goose liver pate and a roasted peach with a braised hazelnut sauce

6 - deep fried anchovies and onion rings served with vanilla bean ice cream

7 - Roasted slices of pork, seasoned with black pepper and served with a slice of melon

8 - Roasted squab leg served with spinach on a bed of corn meal

9 - rhubarb sherbet set in a sea of rhubarb jelly

10 - pineapple sherbet with red peppercorns on a bed of sliced pineapple

With a wine to match each course, naturally. I don't think I've ever been that full, ever. And yes, this is proof that I can be just as much of a fool and/or idiot as the next person.

"Pop goes the weasel 'cause the weasel goes pop!"

2005-07-11T15:14:00.000-07:00

Yes, more quotes from my co-workers. And I have to admit that this one was off-the-wall enough to actually be funny the first time. But he's been saying it for about an hour now. His favorite activity seems to be to call other people sitting around him, and shout it into the phone as fast as he can before they hang up on him. The best part is that we then all hear it in stereo - the real live thing, AND the telephone speaker. Whee.

If he's not careful, something else is going to go pop soon.

Foal Training

2005-06-24T10:21:00.000-07:00

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

2005-06-20T21:31:00.000-07:00

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.htm

No, I don’t get it.

No furniture for you

2005-06-16T23:24:00.000-07:00

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?

2005-06-11T20:55:00.000-07:00

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

2005-06-11T20:49:00.000-07:00

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.