Road Crew Directions, Syria, My Wild Rabbit, Mishka, Mr. Ed, etc.

 

·         The road crew man with the big orange <SLOW> sign pointed my way was at the same time making a hurried circular “COME ON THROUGH” motion with his other hand and a rather dour expression on his face.  Confused at what I thought was a contradiction of directions, I considered stopping to ask him to clarify for me which he wanted, but thought better of it, and so I passed him feeling rather bad that I’d somehow let him down.

·         I hope that, in 2018 or whenever, when we pull out of what will hopefully be a nearly stabilized Syria (except for our residual limited, strategic and surgical financial and troop ground support for miscellaneous and still largely unidentified warring factions with dubious sponsors), President Weiner, or whoever, will finally and decisively address the Hatfield and McCoy thing.  No one can argue that the McCoys are the aggressors there, or the Hatfields are, or whatever.  Anyway, somebody’s hillbilly ass needs to be bombed.

·         I have this wild pet rabbit who l let roam my neighborhood.  We have a reciprocal relationship; I throw him oyster crackers and he leaves me raisinettes.  I named him Scat, and trained him to run away when I call to him, which I think is pretty cool.  So anyway, if you live near me, and see a rabbit in your yard, yell “Scat!”.  If it runs away, and you find raisinettes (or uneaten oyster crackers) where he was standing, yep, that’d be my rabbit.

·         I saw previews on the news that they were going to feature Mishka the talking Huskie.  They said that the dog was amazing, and could say “I Love You” to her owner  on command.  Apparently this lady takes Mishka all over the place performing this incredible act.  When they got to the segment with Mishka and her owner, it took a couple of warm ups where the dog kind of howled something like “ay yah-yah”, but then it was clear that Mishka was actually saying “I Loathe You”.  I guess Mishka is getting tired of the grind.  I felt badly for the owner at first, but you gotta be careful how you treat a talking dog, especially one who gets air time on the news.

                             In a sort of related story………….

·         I read an article about the old TV show Mr. Ed, which was about a horse that could talk.  I remember the show being kind of funny.  (I purposefully am leaving out the hilarious pun where I call the show a “one trick pony”.)  The article said that in order to make the horse look like it was talking, the animal trainer smeared peanut butter inside his mouth.  Animal rights folks probably wouldn’t stand for this anymore, especially with so many concerns about peanut allergies, but back then producers could have saved a  bunch of special effects money and actors’ salaries by just showing the horse trying to deal with peanut butter in his mouth for 30 minutes each week without the silly premise that he could talk and wear sunglasses.   They could have called the show “Hey, look at that freakin’ horse!  He’s got peanut butter in his mouth! That's hilarious!”