JUST ONE MORE MYSTERY TO TAKE WITH ME TO MY GRAVE

Blog number seventy-nine                                19 Feb. 2007

Ya know, if I was just starting High School, I would gear my career path to becoming a newspaper reporter, specifically in order to have a column that would enable me to ask people how this and that was done, or why this or that was or was not done. A curiosity satisfier column in your local daily paper, if you will.

One of my columns would be on jigsaw puzzles.  I have only recently begun to work on them again.  I stopped for many years even though I was addicted to them, because after I spent several hours on one, I would walk away with the feeling that I had wasted all that time.  Five hours and nothing accomplished.  I felt guilty.  So I stopped doing them except that every so often I couldn't resist buying a particular one that caught my eye.  Now, since I am retired and all my time is wasted, I don't have that guilty feeling any more, so the past week or so I have finished one of five hundred pieces, one of seven hundred and fifty pieces, one of a thousand pieces, and one of a thousand pieces that is shy of finishing by about eighty pieces.

What I have only recently noticed is that these pictures must be paintings.  Exquisitely detailed paintings.  And none of them are signed paintings.  Why?  Why, after spending all that time and talent and obviously love on a painting, do the artists not sign them?  And where do they come from?  Do the artists paint them specifically for jigsaw puzzles like that sheriff's husband in the movie, "Fargo" did for stamps?  Or do the jigsaw-puzzle-put-together people go around to art stores in fancy tourist places (you won't find paintings like these in any art show or art contest, lemme tell you)?  And if this is the way they get them, is one of the customs that the name be taken off?  If that is so, why?  Whose rule is that, the artist's or the picture puzzle guy's?

ASSAULT THE BATTERY

Blog number seventy-seven                                19 Feb. 2007

Last week Teresa was watching a program and these girls were stalked by this killer and when one got in the car the starter turned over with great power, but the car wouldn't start.  What did they do?  Got some jumper cables and jump started the car. 

See anything wrong with this picture?

There are actors, writers, directors, electricians, sound men, cosmetologists and hanger-ons gathered around any televisions shoot.  And nobody said anything about this anomaly?  Or somebody said something and nobody cared?  What the hell?  I blame the director mostly.  It's his job to see that the story hangs together.

Yesterday I'm watching an excellent Canadian television mini series called, "Slings and Arrows," and once again, in the short space of one week, I again had my ARRRGGGG! functions engaged by supposedly intelligent literary and creative personages. TWICE in one week! 

This guy goes out to his car, an evidently well-charged battery engages the starter with a reassuring er..er..er..er, but the car won't start, so this woman says, "I'll get the jumper cables," runs over to her trunk, pulls them out, they hook them up and viola!  The car starts.  And to add insult to injury, the guy says, "I'm going to get a new car.  I keep having trouble getting this one started."  HE'S GOING TO BUY A NEW CAR BECAUSE HE THINKS SOMETHING'S WRONG WITH HIS BATTERY!

Nobody standing around a television shot in this day and age understands the connection between the battery and the starter?  They don't understand that if the starter turns over, there is nothing wrong with the battery?  Is that what they're trying to tell me?  What, I wonder, do they do when they get a flat tire?  Put more water in the radiator?  Buy a new car?  Shoot themselves?

HAVE YOU LOST YOUR SO-CALLED MIND?

Blog number seventy-six                                11 Feb. 2007

Walking to "work" one day, I stopped at a corner to tie my shoe laces.  When I bent over, everything was normal, I could see the stop sign, the sidewalk, the street, the grass between the sidewalk and the street, but I lost all perspective of what was up, down, left, right, all spatial references.  It seemed to me that the only smart thing to do was to relax and let gravity take me to a safe place, so I collapsed.

For days afterwards, I would tell people what had happened to me and then invariably ask, "What was that?"  I was so puzzled and curious.  I realized from this why amnesia victims try so hard to find out the past.  It drives a person crazy. About three days later I suddenly remembered Teresa and I finding an old woman at the bottom of a stone stairway, bleeding.  She told us she had bent over and suddenly collapsed because she didn't know what else to do.  Every time she told the story, she would end with the question, "what was that?"

I found out that it was vertigo.

I had an epiphany that we must all have abilities totally unknown to our conscious mind that if we lost them ...

My Dad had a stroke and I asked him what it was like and he said, "I was in my body, but I couldn't move anything."  I can't imagine what that must be like, know what I mean?  Another thing was that my Dad was always a bombastic person, totally an extrovert.  After the stroke he seemed to spend most of the time silent - but aware.  I think that experience shook his world and he started wondering instead of pontificating.  Might be good for everyone to have that experience, I am thinking.  It would be especially good for those who believe that we are our brains. You know - idiots.

WHEN YOU SPEAK OF THIS... AND YOU WILL, PLEASE BE KIND.

Blog number seventy-five                                09 Feb. 2007

We once bought a donkey from a neighboring farmer just for kicks.  We named him Don Quixote.  Say it out loud.

We soon grew tired of him and a little scared of a lawsuit because he had the hots for the neighbor's Shetland Pony mares.  When let out of his pen one day he headed straight for the neighbor's mares, excitedly running up and down the fence line looking for an opening.  He wasn't all that big, so I thought I could grab him around the neck and stop him.  Didn't happen.  He paid me no more mind than if I had been a white oyster-shell button, wide collar French-cuffed shirt tied around his neck.  He dragged me along with him on his quest as if he and I were drinking buddies out looking for a good time.  I had not realized those animals were so strong.  Luckily I had a Vespa scooter, so I ran back home and got that and chased him back into his pen with it.  He was really scared of that scooter.  Thank Allah, BBHN.

We decided to sell the donkey.  The guy who answered our ad asked me if the animal had testicles.  He wanted him for breeding with female horses in order to produce mules for pack animals.  I told him I didn't know, that we had bought him young and the seller hadn't said anything about testicles.  The guy said he didn't want him unless he had them.  We looked where cows and horses had testicles, but we didn't see anything.  I told him I would phone the guy that sold him to me and ask him where we could find donkey balls.

The seller of the donkey told me I could find the testicles under his belly, about halfway between the front and hind legs.  He said I would have to feel them because they were not visible.

I told the anticipated buyer what the guy told me.  He said he didn't want to reach under there and I didn't want to, and I reiterated that the seller told me over the phone that the donkey was uncut, but the guy was unmoved and insisted that he needed proof and that he couldn't use an infertile donkey.

I realized that the only way I was going to get rid of this animal and save myself from lawsuits over procured bastards from my neighbor's mares was to reach  under this animal's belly and feel around for his nuts.  How he was going to take this, I didn't know, but I feared the worst.  I gathered up my courage, leaned over as far from the donkey as I could and gingerly reached under his belly for his balls, expecting a violent kick.  As soon as I touched the belly and began feeling around for his testicles, the grateful creature immediately spread all four legs in anticipated enjoyment of a happy ending given by what to him could have been nothing less than an experienced Asian masseuse.  

I found the hidden treasure, the guy bought the donkey, we put him in the truck and Don Quixote was off to the good life.  I should be so lucky.

RETREAT HELL, WE JUST GOT HERE

Blog number seventy-four                                08 Feb. 2007

You know what I don't get?  No, not "Cats."  I don't get good looking shoes.  I  hear, "Oh, what beautiful shoes."  They're shoes.  The go on the feet.  A sole and two straps.  Beautiful!  A sole and two straps.  Ugly!  What's the criteria?

I was getting my teeth cleaned one afternoon and the cleaning lady says to me, she says, "When I first saw your shoes I thought they were the ugliest things but now I see they really look nice."  What's that all about?  Ugly shoes?  Can you imagine a conversation, "When I first saw her I thought she was ugly but now I see she's a hotty."  

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Back in the day, I changed a lot of brake shoes.  The hardest part was hooking that spring to the two shoes.  I finally used a grip lock and a strong screwdriver, but even then it was a chore.  The shoe kept slipping while I tried to pull the grip lock and lever the screwdriver.  The grip lock often slipped off, banging knuckles some times. There was a tool for this, but I never could find out how it was used.  It was kinda like a reverse pair of scissors. None of my friends knew how to use it either.  Last night I'm watching a program on hydraulics and lo and behold they used this tool and it was so simple.  Hook the spring, place the other end of the "scissors" onto the brake shoe (thus holding it steady) and squeeze and pop!  It's in.  Damn

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I've often heard (and read) that a large percentage of men in battle don't fire their guns.  This was always attributed to man's natural inclination to not kill, but then I read a guy that said, since people always shoot at whoever's shooting at them, these people hold their fire so that they don't get shot at.

I remember reading of on horrendous battle where the Americans almost got wiped out, but managed to hang on and win.  The Louie had noticed a tank sitting where it could have fired right into the attackers and made it an easy victory.  After the battle he went up to the tank commander and asked him why he hadn't fired.  The reply was , "I didn't want to give away our position." 

I read this before I read about not firing for self-preservation, so I thought the commander was just being overly cautious with the tank, so that it could be used in a worse battle. 

I had already read of several cases of this sort.  Once, when this happened to a group of tanks when The Japs overran the Philippines, the infantry general told the tank battalion commander to take his damn tanks and to stay the hell away from his boys, that they weren't worth a damn in a battle anyhow.