Shooting Stars and Flying Fish

Why do people always say, “Look, a shooting star!”?
No one else will ever see it.

It’s gone.

Some people even try to help you see it by pointing in it’s former location.

That doesn’t help.

It’s gone.

A similar thing happens with flying fish.

“Look a flying fish!”

It’s gone.

But there is a good chance it will resurface: usually not in the original place it was spotted. I’m no dummy.

I guess you would need a pretty long aquarium if you had a flying fish as a pet. I mean if you wanted to get the full effect. It would be kind of boring showing off your flying fish to someone if all it does is swim around like a regular fish.

You’d probably need a pretty secure tank lid as well.

And keep your windows closed; just in case.

Ding Ding

20 years ago I babysat my nephews for a weekend. They were 2 and 5 years old. On the first evening I was in the kitchen, with the 5 year old, making dinner.

“Ding Ding” called the 2 year old from somewhere else in the house.

My 5 year old nephew started to laugh.

“Ding Ding” called the 2 year old again.

“Why are you laughing?”, I asked the 5 year old.

“You gotta wipe his bum!”, he blurted out as he laughed.

I went to the bathroom and there was the 2 year old waiting for his wipe.

My sister forgot to mention that there would be ass wiping duties involved.



Over the years I’ve intentionally and repeatedly embarassed my nephew with the line, “I wiped your bum.”

Recently this has backfired on me.

Supposedly now, I am a loser for having wiped his bum.



I’m hoping when I am really really old, he will have to change my adult diapers, so the tables will turn again. And I can say, “What a loser, you wiped my bum!”

Ahh! The circle of life.

Time Tunnel

The local department store, where I live in Japan, has a car park. The 2 are connected by a 3rd floor walkway.

Once or twice a week I use this walkway.

They don’t play English music in the parkade or the department store, but there is always English music playing in this corridor.

Old 70’s music!

It’s my own personal time tunnel: Jim Croce’s “Operator” lives; so does Carole King’s “So Far Away”, and The Archies’ “Sugar, Sugar”.

Out of the car, into Nazareth’s “Holiday” for 10 seconds, and then I pop-out into the department store.

It’s fun running the gauntlet; it reminds me of the local radio station I listened to as a kid. Same songs, but they were new or mildly dated then.

Maybe it’s channeling CKAY 1500 AM “Voice of the Cowichan Valley” ; but at least it’s not channeling the Birthday Line crap.

I never did win a birthday cake from that program.

Look A Like Siblings

When I was in High School, a friend of mine had a nice looking younger sister: one year younger.

Myself and my other friends liked her: she was pretty, good sense of humor, and fun.

But we stayed away from her.

The problem was her and her brother really resembled each other. They could have been clones. There would be something creepy about being with her. I could imagine kissing her, staring into her eyes, and thinking about her brother. Double Creepy.

After High School, she ended up living with my friend’s best friend.

Everyone wanted to ask the boyfriend if he saw a freakish family resemblance between his girlfriend and his best friend. But we didn’t; it wouldn’t have been in good taste.

If he did eventually have kids with her, I bet I know who they look like.

Signposts

What’s the deal with these signposts?

They are everywhere!

Do you really want or need to know how far you are away from N.Y., London, Tokyo, or Singapore?

Sure, they are mildly interesting stuck out in the middle of nowhere; and they are a good photo opportunity. But most of the time I don’t really care.

I guess if you can’t visit the Equator, the Prime Meridian, the Tropic of Cancer/Capricorn, or the North/South Pole; they are the next best thing.

Sometimes they list less well known places.

I saw one that included Bratsk, Russia. Like anyone is going there in a hurry. They must have had an exchange student visiting when they made the sign. Or it’s an in-joke for the locals.

Sometimes there is a place mentioned, but it has a different name than the one used in English.

Usually some multilingual person figures it out and enlightens the rest of us. It’s almost always one of the big cities in South Africa. I thought the Dutch owned the franchise on multiple names for the same place; but the South Africans are a close second.

I’m amazed there isn’t one of these on the moon.

I guess it would be pretty boring: every place on Earth would be the same distance away.

The sign could include other planets and the sun though.

I can just imagine some aliens stopping by and looking at the signpost.

“Ahh! That’s Earth. Lock n’ Load brothers; Lock n’ Load.”

Japanese Toilets

Japanese toilets are great!

They are just regular sit down affairs, but the toilet seat is high tech. Minus an ejector seat or machine gun turrets, if James Bond’s Q made a toilet, it would look like this.

Special Features:

- heated toilet seat; great in winter.

- a bidet/washlet that sprays water to wash your….. stuff.

- when you sit down the toilet makes a water trickling sound, just in case you need encouragement; or to cover the sound of your own trickling water.

The way the tank fills is pretty cool too. There is a small fountain and basin on the tank lid. When you flush, you can wash your hands with the water that refills the tank. Very water efficient.

If you come to Japan, be sure to use a toilet at least once!


note: that’s not crap on the wall in the photo.

Vial of Life

Some people have a small cannister in their fridge that contains important medical information. Paramedics could possibly use this info to save your life.

My sister isn’t that much of an optimist: she keeps a copy of her Will in the freezer.

If I had a Vial of Life, the note inside would say:

What are you doing looking in my fridge? Shouldn’t you be doing C.P.R. on me, injecting me with something good, or using those paddles to jumpstart me?

If you find me in a compromising position, fix me up and keep the enclosed $100.

P.S. Help yourself to the beer.

Mission Accomplished

Finally got out there and kicked some ass on my front yard!

I always knew it was going to be easy: strong (me) against the weak (them). Nothing is going to get in the way of me and my view. I had the force; those weeds are so easy to flush out, round up, and dump out back where I don’t have to see them. Out back withering and dying by the thousands.

BEFORE




AFTER




Mission Accomplished! Well done!

Now I can just sit inside for the rest of the year and enjoy the view.

What? It’s not over?

I have to keep going out there to battle weeds?

No one told me that!

Maybe my Mom did; but I wasn’t listening :(

Maybe I should have just left it alone.

The Final Cut

I started thinking about the ability to edit the comments other people have left on my site.

Yes, you can! (scary thought; deus ex machina stuff).

I haven’t done it, and wouldn’t; unless the person asked me to. ie. spelling, grammar mistakes, sounded funny/bad/mean/inappropriate………

This is a hypothetical negative comment I might have received:

Well aren’t you a wanker ! Shall I run over your kids for a laugh ? what part of this article should be considered comedy ?


I could change it to something positive!

Well aren’t you an amazing person! Shall I run over to your house for some laughs ? what part of this article should be considered not comedy ? You are incredibly talented! Keep up the good work!!

But I didn’t and wouldn’t.

But I could, if I wanted to!

The NERF Ball

When I was 11, my mother bought me a NERF ball: the old school type; orange and about the size of a grapefruit.

My 24 year old brother use to come for Sunday dinner every week. We’d play soccer with the NERF ball in the living room. I was the goalie and my net was the fireplace screen. My brother was the forward (don’t think they were called strikers yet). He’d do a running commentary on the shots, saves, and goals in a loud voice. We’d play for about an hour.

It drove my mother nuts.

After 6 months of this, she finally hid my NERF ball.

I pleaded and begged for its return. No Deal.

I searched for it. No Luck.

Eventually I forgot about the NERF ball; I moved on to Coleco Head to Head football or the Dune books.

but..

When I was 16, I found it!

I could never use it, or admit that I’d found it though.

My mother had hidden it in the liquor cabinet.


note: Yes. The advertisement does say, ” You can’t hurt babies or old people “.

A Big Disappointment

I’m a procrastinator. I’m a disappointment.

I haven’t done any of the things my Mother said I could do when I became an adult.

- I don’t eat marshmellow sandwiches everyday.

- I don’t stay up all night watching TV.

- I haven’t gotten that Batman tattoo on my face yet.

- I’ve yet to buy the 8 million marbles I said I would.

- I never bumper shine.

- I haven’t played Tetris for 48 hours straight.

- I don’t play with firecrackers.

- I haven’t ridden a roller coaster 100 times in a row.

- I don’t fry bread in the bacon grease, like they do in England.

- I don’t walk around barefoot everyday.

- I haven’t ordered 2 desserts at a restaurant.

- I’ve yet to get a Mr. T haircut.

- I don’t have chocolate sprinkle sandwiches like the Dutch kids use to have.

- I haven’t gone to every house in a 5 km radius to fill 2 pillow cases full of candy on Halloween.

- I haven’t collected all the matchbox cars.

- I never eat a whole bag of chocolate chips.

- I still haven’t bought that H.R. Puff n’ Stuff Jacket with Witchipoo on the sleeve.

I’m a big disappointment.

Tomorrow I’ll get busy.

Premotional

When my sister was 8 years old, her school phoned and asked my mother to come and pick her up.

My mother was concerned, and hurried to the school.

She talked to the teacher and found out what the problem was:

The class had been talking about grandparents. At some time during the discussion my sister said her grandmother had died, and started crying uncontrollably.

My mother took my sister and left.

On the drive home my mother said, ” Gramma isn’t dead, you know that.”
My sister responded, ” Gramma Janes is”.
Our other grandmother had died 10 years before my sister was born!

My sister could have been an actor.

note: crying in class never got me a dayoff; just a schoolyard beating for being such a cry baby.

Allergies

It’s allergy season in Japan.

Lots of people suffering, wearing those white masks, and going to the doctors for shots and pills.

I’m lucky: I don’t have allergies.

I’ve heard this simplified explanation as to why some people get allergies and some don’t.

Everyone has a bucket in their immune system. When the bucket becomes full, you start to get allergies. Some people have big buckets that will never be full; other people have small buckets that filled up a long time ago.

I’m not sure if this is true, but it makes sense to me.

I wonder how full my bucket is.

Maybe my bucket has a hole in it.
Wouldn’t that just be my luck.

On A Different Note

Is there an international agreement about the size and shape of money?

Most countries’ paper money is rectangular and roughly the same size.
It fits in a standard wallet.
If it doesn’t, it’s because of the quantity of notes not the size.


Wouldn’t it be refreshing to pay for something with triangular, oval, or octagonal money?
Even square money would be a change.

The wallet industry would probably enjoy a bit of a financial boom, or at the very least it would put a little more creativity into wallet makers’ lives.

note: what came first: money, wallets, or pockets?

This Is The End

The ends of things are usually bad:

-the end of a relationship
-the end of a friendship
-the end of the toilet roll
-the end of a cigar
-the ends of a cucumber
-the end of the gas in your tank
-the end of a gun
-the end of a favourite TV show
-the end of the alcohol
-the end of your favourite sport’s season ( a hard 2 - 6 months in between)



But some endings are good!

-The End episode of Red Dwarf (actually the first episode)

-the end of winter (unless you are a skier/snowboarder)
-the end of a bad relationship
-the end of the work week
-the end of a bad bottle of shampoo

But my favourite ends are…

the ends of a freshly baked loaf of bread.

The crusts, the door stops, or the heels are the best!

The Depressed Kangaroo

Before Johnny 23 hit the dead pig (see Johnny 23 Can't Drive), I had my own incident.

3 of us left Alice Springs, turned right at 3 Ways, and were making good time on our way to Cairns.
About 9pm we stopped at a service area, filled our tank, and had a hot meal in the restaurant populated by long haul truckers.
On the way out the door everyone stopped eating and stared at us.
"Mind the roos", advised the waitress.

We smiled, nodded, and left.
It felt like a scene out of American Werewolf in London.

I got behind the wheel. We were all laughing because we had yet to see a kangaroo on the drive from Alice Springs.

10 minutes down the road, the area was crawling with kangaroos: hundreds of them!
I slowed down for a few kilometres, and then gradually accelerated until we were barreling along at a steady 90 km/h.
Everything was fine until I noticed something in my peripheral vision flying towards the car from 15 meters away.

The kangaroo landed directly in front of the station wagon.

I ran over it convincingly.

I stopped the car, banned myself to the backseat, and waited for the others to come back from inspecting my handy work.

To this day, I still believe the kangaroo committed suicide.

In a Jiffy

Jiffy
definition: short period of time. (origin unknown, circa 18th century)

I know it's been used before: jiffy marker, jiffy sponge, jiffy pop popcorn.

but

What a cool name for one of those little smart cars!

-Be there in a Jiffy!

-Save money and the environment in a Jiffy!

-Drive to work in a Jiffy!

-Be at the beach in a Jiffy!

Negative Press: He died in a Jiffy.

Bad news, but at least it was in a Jiffy! Not prolonged and drawn out.


note: possible specialized markets:

Alternative Lifestyle People: Spliffy

Women: Miffy or Tiffy

Trendsetters: Spiffy or Niffy-T


double note: rejected names - Iffy, Whiffy, and Siffy

Sparkling Mineral Water

I’ve never been a big fan of sparkling mineral water.

Most places I’ve lived it’s been available, but always hiding on a bottom shelf or huddled with the other random drinks relegated to the fridge seldom opened.

In some countries it’s really popular: part of daily life. That’s fine with me.

In most South American countries, it’s bought as often as regular bottled water.

I got used to it being served with coffee in Argentina. I drank it and enjoyed it; but still would never buy it on purpose.

I only bought it once by mistake.

Extremely hungover I bought two bottles of the stuff.

If you don’t know, sparkling water does not help a hangover.

It doesn’t feel good when you guzzle it.

And personally, I don’t like burping when I’m hungover.

The contents bubbling over when I took the cap off it didn’t help either.



Why do they have it displayed next to the regular water?

Sure it’s water, but there is a night and day difference between sparkling and regular water.

It’s like buying unsweetened baking chocolate instead of a chocolate bar.

You don’t find those things snuggling up to each other on a grocery store shelf.



note: Can you use sparkling water to make instant coffee?

Can you use it in your car radiator?

Can you water plants with it?

If you put it in a hamster’s drink bottle, would you still have a hamster the next day?

From Behind the Wheel

Top Ten Phrases I use while driving.

pre-emptive note:
I am quite a patient driver and do not suffer from Road Rage.
I do not tailgate people I think are driving slow and seldom use my horn.

But I am a verbal driver and find myself saying the same things over and over again when confronted with bad drivers.

So, in no particular order:

1. Come on! What are you doing?

2. Today oldman, today!

3. No, this side is mine. Your side of the road is over there.

4. You can do it. Just turn a little bit more.

5. Blinker then brake people. Blinker then brake.

6. Fxxkin' Jexxs!

7. Are you even trying to make the light?

8. No way! You can't do that!

9. There are just not enough bullets in the world.

10. He's driving with 2 feet! He's driving with 2 feet!

Curved Escalators

Maybe I've lived a sheltered life, but I've never seen one of these before.

I like M.C. Escher drawings and optical illusions, but this curved escalator is magic.
Not being an engineer or very bright; when I think about how this thing actually works, it does my head in.

note: taken at a shopping center in Yokohama, Japan.
youtube has a few videos on one in Caesar's Palace, Las Vegas.

Sports Towels

Bath Towel: big towel used to dry off after baths or showers.
Hand Towel: all purpose small towel used to dry hands and anything else in a pinch.
Paper Towel: made of paper and used to clean up stuff (disposable).
Dish Towel: used to dry dishes, utensils, pots, pans, and glasses.
Beach Towel: used at the beach and very similar to a bath towel.

Sports Towel: all purpose small towel used to dry hands and anything else in a pinch.

Wait a minute.
Isn't that just a hand towel?

I can't think of any sport that requires a towel.
A towel used to wipe off sweat, sure; but sports are not the sole domain of sweat.
Someone gardening, working on their car, outside on a hot day, seriously out of shape, or someone who naturally just sweats a lot uses one of those towels as often as someone involved in sporting activities.

There are already a lot of regular everday products being sold under the sports label: cars, socks, drinks, deodorant, watches,....

Now the towel?

It does sound better than hand towel though.

Let me just sit on my sports sofa in my sports slippers, have some after-sport whiskey, and think this over somemore.

You Call That Brown?

I suffer from an illness.
It only affects me on extended holidays in hot places.

My name is planetross and I'm a tanarexic.

I can never be brown enough.
I listen to people telling me how amazingly tanned I am, but I still want to be browner.
I look in the mirror and don't see dark brown.
I only see myself losing my tan, becoming paler, and turning white.
I need to redouble my tanning efforts and not scrub very hard in the shower.

Luckily I've only had 3 serious bouts of tanarexia in my life.

I should be safe until I quit my job and go travelling again.

Johnny 23 Can't Drive

Winding our way down into Cairns, Australia, my friend and I were too tired to drive. We'd driven from Alice Springs straight.

We let Johnny 23 drive. We'd never let him drive before. It wasn't that we didn't trust him, it was more ... yeah, we didn't trust him.

We added the number after his name because he had slept with 23 women in his 3 months in Australia.
The movie ConAir was big at the time.

When we first met him, he was only Johnny 16.

He had a shaved head, face piercings, could do a few magic tricks, and played 6 songs on his crappy guitar. He didn't drink or do drugs.
So while the rest of us were drinking and doing drunken things, he was impressing women with his 6 songs and magic trickery.

I was co-piloting the stationwagon and saw something in our lane up ahead.
"Something's in the road Johnny", I warned.
It was big and not moving.
"Drive around it Johnny", I advised.
Maybe it was a bag of garbage that fell off of a truck.
"Turn the wheel Johnny", I shouted.
He veered 2 inches to the right.
"Turn the wheel more", I screamed.

He ran over the unidentified object with 2 tires and almost took both axels off the car.
He stopped: we got out to check for damage to the car and to see what he'd hit.
Blood covered the left side of the stationwagon.

He'd hit a wild pig.
To be more specific, he'd hit an already dead wild pig.

He'd killed a dead pig.

He was banished to the backseat forever with no protest.

Omens are Ominous

I'm not very superstitious.
Black cats, broken mirrors, spilt salt, and stepping on spiders don't bother me.
I've had my palms read once, read my horoscope sometimes, and always count my cherry pits: tinker, tailor, soldier, sailor,...
I don't believe in any of those things; they are just mildly entertaining.

But in day to day life, I have my personal omens to gauge how my day will progress.

Good Things to See:

-lots of zeros on my van odometer
-shoehorns
-pinecones
-old women in big hats gardening
-pocket combs (preferably black)
-full moon
-unicorns
-naked women
-pringles
-children eating ice cream


Bad Things to See:

-empty tissue box
-hubcaps on the side of the road
-excessive junk mail
-tricycles
-plastic bag floating in the wind
-police cars
-godzilla
-flying monkeys
-2 suns
-power pole repair crews


Some of these things might seem a bit ridiculous to you, but... crap I just saw a thermometer, now I need to find a stapler.

Haircuts

Hair stylists in Japan love cutting my hair.

As opposed to thick black coarse hair that they usually deal with, mine is fine soft and brown.
I bring change to their routine.

I'm sure I make their day.
I bet at night my hair comes up over a few beers with friends.
"Oh! I cut this foreigner's hair today. It was so fuwa fuwa."

Fuwa Fuwa as defined by my regular hair cutter means: soft like a baby's hair.


I've heard in Korea there are barber shops where you can get a haircut and a blowjob.
I'm not sure if it's really true.
I've visited Korea 3 times, but I've never needed a haircut yet.

Red Cards

I like the red card idea in football/soccer.

I've told you what you've done wrong, and now I'm going to pull a red card out of my shirt pocket just in case you didn't understand me.

I should start carrying around a red card.

serious body odor! red card

bad manners: nose picking at stop lights, cutting toenails in public, saying bad things about Pink Floyd. red card

taking calls on your cellphone in the movie theatre. red card

counting out $20 of change at the supermarket check-out. red card

losing my books, keys, Cds. red card

poor fashion sense. red card


I think you won't be able to field a team tomorrow.

I might just get a whistle too.

Utensil Trays

Is it just me, or are plastic utensil trays, found in most kitchen drawers, a piece of crap.
They universally seem to be not long, wide, or big enough.
Between forks, knives, and spoons; something doesn't fit properly.

Someone should have figured out and fixed this flawed design by now!

Come on plastic tray maker people, pull you plastic fingers out of your plastic asses and smarten up.

Hot Hot Hot

I love hot weather: summer means t-shirts and shorts, BBQs, turning brown, and visits to the beach.
The hottest place I've been is Perth, Australia during a heatwave: 45 degrees Celcius (113 fahrenheit).
I sat on a shaded patio at a hostel with a few others. Between sips of beer, we took turns saying things like:

"It's hot."
"Man, it's hot."
"It's so hot."

Really hot weather affects speech, I guess.

My friend was working in a metal warehouse Australianizing Eastern European jeep things: attaching roo bars, adjusting suspensions, and bolting beer holders on to the dashboards.

He roasted in that warehouse.

Someone put a dial on the wall and labelled it air-conditioner.

Every 15 minutes someone would shout, " Can you turn up the air-con, it's getting a bit warm in here".
Someone would walk over and turn up the dial.

Those guys had a pretty good sense of humor that day; and heat stroke.

I hope at the end of the day they turned the air-con off.
It's not good to waste energy.

Surgical Cameras

I want a microscopic medical camera.
The one that's on a fiber cable inside a slightly larger fiber cable.
I think the technical name is teeny tiny super small fiber opticamera.

It would be very handy.

I'd never have to cut meat or chicken to see if it was cooked.
Just stick in the camera for a look. No more intrusive surgery required.

I could check healing cuts without removing the band-aid.
Band-aids don't grow on trees you know.

I'd take it to the supermarket and use it to check the ripeness of fruit.

I could see what the prize in the cereal or crackerjack box was.

I might probe my toothpaste tube. I've always wanted to see what the inside looks like.

I could see if the fridge light really does turns off when you close the door.

I wouldn't use it on myself; that would be dangerous.
But animals and other people would be okay.

I'm going to check on ebay now.
Maybe they have one of those micro-lasers too!

SpellCheck

I have a friend.
He's not a good speller.
He knows this.
When he writes something on his computer, he uses SpellCheck.

It doesn't seem to work.

When he sends me something, I can usually spot a few terribly mangled words.

I let him know that there are spelling errors.

He questions me.
"Are you sure? I used SpellCheck. Are you sure syphilis isn't spelt sifilus? I used SpellCheck."

I went to his house last week. We were looking at something on his computer. I noticed his SpellCheck button.
It said SpelCzech.

I guess he shouldn't have bought that cheap Mc N'Tosh computer.

I told him to buy the HooLit Picard, but he wouldn't listen!

Pregnant Women

As a rule, I don't find pregnant women sexy.

In most countries the women blimp out or wear big baggie maternity clothes. These are not on my sexy things list. The fact that they are lugging around another human inside of them, that I had nothing to do with, doesn't help either.

If life were a board game, then pregnant women would be sitting on the Miss a Turn square.
No one should be passing them the dice.

In Argentina, slim pregnant women in revealing clothes strolling along the streets made me question my long held opinion.
They looked pretty good flaunting their bellies, but still as a rule pregnant women aren't really sexy.

Two years ago while walking on a lonely beach in Brazil, there was a woman walking towards me. She was pushing a beach stroller with a kid in it.
A woman with a child can be sexy all she wants: it's in my rule book.

She had a nice body and a very small bikini. The closer she got the better she looked. Nicely tanned Yummy Mummy I was thinking, while unconsciously sucking in my stomach.
When we finally passed each other, I saw her profile.
She was about 8 months pregnant with a big round belly.

I need my depth perception checked.

She looked pretty good from the back as well.

She must have been an Argentine!

Animal Penal System

Zoos make me sad.
I like seeing the animals; but after looking through plexiglass, bars, and fences for a while, I start feeling like I'm visiting a prison.

If the animals had actually been convicted of something, I'd feel better.

"In the next case is the chameleon convicted of identity theft".

"The enclosure to your right holds the great panda serving life for armed robbery".

"These spider monkeys were part of a Breaking and Entering syndicate that took police 6 months to solve".


The gorillas are usually so locked up they seem like the 3 time losers of the animal kingdom.


If zoos are prisons, then safari parks must be minimum security facilities for white collar criminals.

Petting zoos resemble half-way houses; the animals seem to have a small chance of returning to normal society.

If I was a different animal than I am now, I'd want to be a blue whale; because they ain't sticking me in no zoo!
And if they actually made something that could hold me, it's going to cost someone a hell of a lot of money.

Soup and Crackers

It's just not soup, if there are no crackers in it.

I love crackers in soup. I'll dump in 6 or 8 at a time, let them get a bit soggy, and then devour them. I can eat about 30 crackers with a bowl of soup.

I don't do the old hand clap/cracker thing and break them up: I put them in whole.

Soup with out crackers is like:

-watching your favourite sport, but the play-by-play is in a language you don't know.

-turkey with no dressing/stuffing, gravy, or cranberry sauce.

-a school with out a drinking fountain in the hall.

-a chinese restaurant with out placemats explaining the Chinese Zodiac.

-a car without a stereo/radio.

-a Playboy without a centerfold.

-a visit to the dentist without getting a free toothbrush.

-underwear without pockets.

-a calendar without November.

It's just not right.

Twins

My best friends are twins, but they aren't related.

They are from different families, and each has a twin brother.

I know all 4 twins: we went to school and played sports together.
But, I'm only good friends with one of each set.

I'm not sure why?

It's not because they are identical and I don't like being confused.

It's not because they didn't like hanging out with their twin, and I had to make a choice.

It's not because one got married, so I ended up becoming closer to the single twin.

It's not because one twin moved away, and our friendship ended because of the distance.

I guess it was a personality thing:

My friends' twin brothers are pricks.

Slang

My slang is stunted, dwindling and dying.

I used to pride myself on my witty turn of a phrase.

10 years overseas has killed it.
I only talk to a handful of native English speakers: 2 regularly.

We've become incestuous with our slang: using each others outdated slang with nothing new being infused into the mix.

I'm sure if you heard us talking together, we'd sound like a bad 80's sitcom.

In another 10 years we might be fashionable.

Rockin'

Brazilian Bus Drivers and Belts

In Brazil buses have a buzzer that warns the driver that he is over the speed limit.

Some drivers drive below the speed limit.

Some speed and ignore the buzzer; eventually it just becomes background noise.

Some hover around the buzzer threshold: buzzer rings, stops, rings, stops,...
These drivers are the most annoying, as you are constantly expecting and waiting for the buzzer to go off again; or you are dozing off and the buzzer startles you back to full consciousness.

My belt is like those Brazilian bus drivers.

In summer I'm a 3rd holer: under or on my ideal weight.
In winter I'm a 2nd holer: over my ideal weight, but it's a daily thing to be expected.
But at the moment I'm hovering between the 2nd and 3rd hole.

It's annoying: somedays I use the 2nd hole and other days I use the 3rd.

At least there isn't a buzzer on my belt.

Empty Nest

A woman I know told me she found herself home alone at night for the first time in 25 years.
She turned the TV up loud and switched on all the lights in the house.
She was seriously nervous just talking about it.

She asked me how I cope with being alone.

Living alone is my natural state.
I don't know any different.

It's like asking me how it is to live with a big nose, sweaty feet, or extreme moviestar good looks.

It's my natural state.
I don't know any different.

I did mention the TV thing though, and that I'd seen strange people outside her house recently.

Solitary Confinement

Solitary Confinement would kill me!
I'd go crazy after a week by myself: crazy like a shithouse rat!

My friend tried the solitary test on a beach in Australia.
He just wanted to see how long he could stand being alone.
A little radio was his only companion.

The radio batteries lasted 8 days.
He lasted 9 days.

A hiker I met said he had gone hiking for 6-8 weeks several times without seeing another person. He confessed his favourite pastime was setting up a Bruce Lee style training area in the forest. Blindfolded and naked he tried to knock pinecones off of sticks he had placed within this area.
He never did quite explain why he had to be naked to do this.

If I ever have to go in to solitary confinement, I'll be sure to take a solar powered radio and some pinecones with me.

Living to 100

My great aunt lived to 101.
Her body slowly failed her, but her mind was pretty sharp up until the end.
She told me once that, she had lived too long.

Like the long living Scruldbruggs born with a 3rd eye in Gulliver's Travels: longevity is more of a curse than a blessing.

I'd like to live to 100 anyway!

I want that birthday card from the Queen or King, if there still is one in 2065.
Getting that birthday card would be like the theatre lights being turned up after a great movie.
Time to go home.
Please dispose of your garbage on the way out.


note: I also want to be the interviewed old fart that says:

"I smoked, drank, and didn't do a bit of healthy living.
So put that in your pipe and smoke it!"

Why an I-Pod is like a Penis

Everyone is always touching it,
playing with it,
checking to make sure it's still there,
adjusting it,
moving it around,
pulling it out to look at,
showing it to their friends,
and buying accessories for it.



Did I say penis?

I meant cell phone.

Battling Caterpillars

Last year I had a caterpillar invasion in my front yard bushes.
Big caterpillars: the size of my fingers!

I took my neighbour's advice: pull them off with chopsticks and step on them.

After a hard week of plucking and squishing caterpillars, I had eliminated about 500 of the big buggers.
Caterpillar guts and carcasses littered the ground.
It was a real mess.

I left a few alive, so hopefully I can do it again this year.

Fear

I'm not afraid of too many things.
I'm fine with heights, small spaces, spiders, and the dark.

I'm scared of monkeys.

More specifically, I'm afraid they will jump up and scratch my eyes out.

There are monkeys close to where I live in Japan.

As long as the monkeys or myself are in a cage, I'm fine.
"Haha, look at the funny monkeys. How cute."

But when there is no barrier between us, I don't think they are funny or cute anymore.

I knew a guy at University; 6'7" (about 2 meters tall) and big: fighting big!
He was afraid of toenails.
You could chase him around all day with a freshly clipped toenail.

Now that's a funny fear.

Unless they are monkey toenails.

Why Dr. Seuss isn't Popular in Japan

I think the Whos in Whoville are pretty upset with how he drew them too!