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.