Things I Want (Or Need) To Know

  • I wonder why I’m thinking of weddings today?  I don’t know why the blog software says I posted this on April 28th.  I posted it at about 1:00 AM on the 29th.
  • How can anybody seriously say that Prince William’s marriage to Kate Middleton is the “wedding of the century” when the century is only a little over ten-years old?
  • I’m sorry, but I just can’t picture William and Kate and all their royal friends doing the electric slide.  Can you?  And if they don’t do it, are they considered officially married?
  • I’m thinking that catching at least a glimpse of “THE WEDDING” today will be unavoidable (even if you’re not interested, and I’m not) if you’re anywhere near a TV.  What do you think?
  • Last week, on NBC Nightly News, Brian Williams showed a darling snapshot of our President as a child with his mother.  In it, he was dressed in a pirate costume.  Williams said that President Obama is the first former pirate to be elected President.  How does he know that?  Perhaps there’s an historic photo of another President in a pirate costume.  And what about all the Presidents who served before photography was invented?
  • Are there any rules for pushing a shopping cart around the supermarket?  Are you supposed to try to block the intersections of all the aisles?  Is the objective to run head-on into any cart coming in the other direction?
  • If you want to join the mile-high club, does being in Denver, CO, or Laramie, WY, count?

Things I Know

  • President Obama finally released his long-form birth certificate.  I never thought he wasn’t born in Hawaii.  I believed he wasn’t born at all.  But seriously, the President has nobody to blame but himself for keeping this non-issue alive for the last three years.

  • I know it’s an odd notion, but I believe parts that must be replaced during the useful life of any machine ought to be reasonably easy to replace.  The most recent thing I encountered that doesn’t meet that standard is the belt on my family’s upright vacuum cleaner.  It’s not easy to replace; it’s barely possible to replace.

  • As is my habit, I went to the NY International Auto Show last Friday.   I didn’t want anything I could afford and I couldn’t afford anything I wanted. 

  • When I claim, as I do from time to time, that I know the worst joke in the world, not everyone asks me to tell it, but nobody I’ve known for more than a few minutes argues that I can’t possibly.

Things I Know

  •  I’m beginning to think that President Obama wasn’t born at all, let alone born in Hawaii.
  • Not only do you have to pay your income taxes by the middle of April (usually the 15th, but this year the 18th), but the middle of April is also when I have to start mowing my lawn.  Wild onions start growing prolifically long before that, which wouldn’t be so bad except that they’re not edible.
  • Sometimes, when you can’t sleep, there’s an unusually good movie on late-night TV.  Saturday night into Sunday morning, there was “Bedazzled,” the original with Dudley Moore and Peter Cook, not the awful remake.  If you haven’t seen it, watch it.  If you have seen it, watch it again.  I’ve seen it many times and I pick up something else funny every time I do.
  • Like many cell phones you can buy today, mine is also a powerful computer, a camera and several other things I can’t think of right now.  I set it up to use my home Wi-Fi network.  The instructions say that using it that way shortens the time before your battery needs to be recharged.  They aren’t kidding.  I should probably plug it in if I use it that way.
  • Diversity at work:  in my local Waldbaum’s supermarket, the two African-American ladies in front of me in the checkout line bought two boxes of lasagna noodles and two boxes of matzos.
  • Notwithstanding what it says on the supermarket receipt, I remain unconvinced that I really saved $28 on only 16 items at the supermarket.
  • Speaking of supermarket receipts, I find them very confusing.  If soda is on sale for 99 cents a bottle, the market should ring it up for 99 cents, not for $1.89 with a 90-cent credit somewhere further down the bill. 

Things I Want (Or Need) To Know

  • Have we had more gales since the beginning of last winter than we usually do?  It seems like we have to me.
  • Who decided that standard saw horses should be as short as they are (I believe 32″)?  I’m staining porch flooring in preparation for repairing my porch, and if I didn’t have a couple of really tall saw horses (37″), I’d be crippled right about now, instead of just aching.
  • If you’re wasting something expensive, do people still say, as my mother used to, “Do you think that grows on trees?”  Lumber is so expensive these days; you’d think it doesn’t grow on trees.
  • Did you hear the latest commercials for Dodge cars and SUV’s?  They have a tag line:  “We are Dodge.  We are never neutral.”  What does that mean?  Is every new Durango delivered with a broken transmission?
  • I read an article about security measures hotels take to keep people from stealing towels.  Could someone please explain to me why anyone steals hotel towels?  If stealing is wrong doesn’t work for you, they’re too small and too thin for me to want them.  I need two or three to get dry after a shower; the ones they distribute at the hotel pool are even worse.
  • A sixteen year old girl survived a plunge from San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge.  The news story I read was dated April 18th, but didn’t specify whether the incident happened Monday or Sunday.  According to the San Francisco Chronicle, it wasn’t clear whether the girl jumped or fell from the bridge.  Suicide is a serious mental health issue; so is attempted suicide.  I don’t mean to make light of either, but how exactly do you fall from the Golden Gate Bridge unless you’re rebuilding it, painting it, or changing the light bulbs?

Things I Know

    • Now that it’s April and the sun is getting stronger, I think it’s time to tell everyone that when my daughter was a toddler, she called the unguent that one applies in order to avoid sunburn “sun scream.”

    • As things begin to bloom around here, I wish I had enough room on my property to plant a magnolia tree.

    • Abner Doubleday is famous for something he didn’t do.  He’s alleged to have invented baseball.  But he did do something that went down in history.  Doubleday was the artillery officer at Fort Sumter SC 150 years ago, so he directed the first union shot of the Civil War.

    • Nine, possibly ten bodies have been found along Ocean Parkway in the area between Jones Beach and Gilgo.  And we thought that area was interesting when Robert Matheson was trying to save the OBI.

    • I spent most of last week in Albany, NY.  Well, Colonie, actually.  On the way there, I took a side trip to Cooperstown.  Yes, I visited the Baseball Hall of Fame.  I go there as often as I can.  I first went about six years ago and liked it so much I became a subscribing member.  But this time, I finally got to the Farmers’ Museum when it was open and I saw the Cardiff Giant.  The giant was a big hoax in the second half of the nineteenth century.  Uncovered in 1869, by 1870, it was such a successful hoax that famed showman P.T. Barnum had a replica made.   Then, Barnum displayed the replica and said his was the original and the original was a fake.  When the Cardiff Giant was uncovered, there were people who identified it as a fake right away.  Still, seeing it in the museum on RTE 80 in Cooperstown, it’s hard to believe that anyone ever fell for it.

Things I Want (Or Need) To Know

  • If you enter your PIN number in the local ATM machine, do the two redundancies cancel each other out, or multiply?

  • I heard a song by the 60’s British Invasion group, Herman’s Hermits.  It made me wonder why hermits would get together for the purpose of making recordings.  Wouldn’t that defeat the purpose of being hermits?

  • As part of the observation of National Library Week, I read to two classes at a grade school.  Were there really pretty teachers when I was in elementary school?  If there were, I was totally oblivious to beautiful women at that stage of my life.

  • Whats the most important thing you learned in school?  The reason I ask is I just realized the most important thing I learned in school had nothing to do with academic subjects and I didn’t learn it from a teacher.  The most important thing I learned in school is you can’t make someone love you if they don’t want to.

  • A TV commercial touts the benefits of the Bell & Howell solar animal repeller.   It says if you use the product, there’s no need for cruel traps or toxic poisons.  I couldn’t help but wonder what a non-toxic poison would be like. 

Things I Know

  • I’m off to Albany NY for the rest of the week where I’ll be doing one of the things I do best:  talking. And before anyone else says it, if the truth be known, I’m a little bit off all the time.

  •  If the planets align properly, I’ll visit Cooperstown on Tuesday too.  I really like the Baseball Hall of Fame and if I can get there Tuesday, it looks like I’ll finally be able to visit the Farmers’ Museum.  Last time I was in Cooperstown the Farmers’ Museum was closed for the season, but it opens April 1st.  I’ve wanted for as long as I can remember to see the Cardiff Giant.  I just like hoaxes, that’s all, and the Cardiff Giant is an historical hoax.

  • Somebody has me on the wrong mailing list.  I keep getting offers to buy or rent property in the palm resort in Dubai, you know the one for rich people that’s built on artificial islands that look like a palm tree when viewed from the air.

  • I’m not saying anything about the awful accident and the young man who was hit and subsequently died was apparently a fine person.  Nevertheless, the website of the NY Post on Friday, April 2 around 9:30 PM said:  “Bronx High School Student Critically Injured After Being Struck By Train.”  Wrong!  Wouldn’t “Bronx High School Student Critically Injured When Struck By Train,” be more correct?   I mean it would be really weird, if a train hit you, nothing happened, but after that you got seriously hurt.

  • Snooki, it was recently reported, was paid $32,000 to speak at Rutgers University.  Toni Morrison, a Nobel-prize-winning author will get $30,000 to speak at Rutgers next commencement.  Dean Wormer was wrong.  Not only can you go through life fat, drunk and stupid; you should.