Off to see the Gee Whizzard

The other day my dog, Bella, met Ottoball at the door. He had just rode his Harley in from Jacksonville and she heard him pull up. Well, she got to wagging her tail so hard that she busted it open on the edge of the pantry. And I mean she busted it open. Now, it would seem that dogs got no nerves in their tails or else have a huge threshold for pain. Or both. So, with her tail busted wide open, she followed him through the house, tail still a'going non-stop.

Cool story? Not hardly. Without a crime scene kit, all blood looks pretty much alike. Not to get too technical on ya, but it's the DNA that helps discern this guy's blood from that guy's. Or in this case, dog blood from people blood. I had to get up in the middle of whatever it was I was watching, and whatever it was was most likely cool and reality based, maybe with dancing and/or singing, to scrub my blood spattered walls. Yep, the tail of that mutt had slung blood all across several walls of my house, including the laundry room where most people enter my house, and the foyer where strangers do. Since buckets of blood was all slung up and spattered, like a sorority dorm room in a Roger Corman hack 'em up flick, and the fact that my hair is frequently disheveled and my face unshaven, I felt I must clean it up immediately or risk the UPS delivery man turn me in for an apparenty heinous murderizement. It looked that bad. Like a grisley crime had taken place. Anyway, time to turn my house into a set for CSI: Marphil Loop - 1 1/2 minutes. Time to clean it - considerably longer.

I get these videos from Pipedragger. Don't know where he gets them, but I figured I might share a little.
First, a straight talking Brit on Europe and Saudi Arabia:


Then this came in an e-mail: Have you ever noticed: When you put the 2 words "The" and "IRS" together it spells "Theirs."?

This is the actual letter I sent in in response to notification from Alex Sink, Florida's Chief Financial Officer, Democrat in a Republican administration, and woman with a man's name. Seems I had not kept up with my continuing education as a licensed insurance agent. Sent this as my termination letter because really, the first, and only, lesson that I learned, or needed to learn, was that I was gonna starve in a job that was strictly commision . Hopefully the right Ms. Sink has a sense of humor:

William E Abernathy
608 Marphil Loop
Brandon, FL 33511-7128
23 March, 2008

Florida Department of Financial Services
200 East Gaines Street
Tallahassee, FL 32399-0319

Dear Sir or Maam,
I would like to terminate my resident license, # P003648. I am no longer employed as an agent. It was an interesting endeavor that netted me exactly $0.01 in income, which I would not have made except that my direct deposit information had to be tested.

I have included with this signed admission of failure my license card for you to destroy and/or mock.

Sincerely,

William Edward Abernathy

We'll see.

I am off to Queens, NYC today. Seems I have a date with destiny. Well, actually, seems I have a couple of classes at JFK airport. Told the boss I would skip th rental car and use taxis. How very cosmopolitan of me.

Ever heard of Canton, MA? Neither had I until I met a friend there for dinner. We had a beer and talked about people we knew. I almost didn't make it. We were meeting up halfway between where I was and where they were, the aforementioned Canton, MA, and I was using my GPS to get me there. Long story short, as if that is even possible for me, I drove from Rhode Island and on into Massachusetts (OK, how exactly do you spell that???) using a route that included only seedy looking parts of town before I finally pulled over to check my GPS settings. Sure enough, I had gotten it back from a friend with it set to avoid highways and toll roads. After unchecking those unfortunate avoidances, it shot me up onto I-95 and I made good time the rest of the way. So anyway, yesterday I was driving back from Tampa and I looked over at the truck in the lane beside me. On the door it had the name of the trucking company... in Canton, MA. Small world or coincidental highway, take your pick.

JC Penny is using a John Prine song in a commercial. The song is KILLING THE BLUES, but he's not singing. It's the one where the 3 year old girl in a dress and cowboy boots stomps a cake. The symbolism of that does tend to escape me. (Apparently, Allison Krauss & Robert Plant coverd it on their album, too. Hmmmm.)

Will a tree falling randomly in your yard take out a section of fence? Nope. It'll fall on a corner of the fence and take out 2 sections. That, folks, is the natural orneriness of things.

Well, like they say, and by they i really mean them:

It's easier to let it all die a fairy tale than admit that something bigger's passing through, out

Ramblin' Ed

These lyrics rule! The presence of greatness! etc.!!