Toilet Troubles

 

Over the summer months, Beloved and I took a few quick trips out of state. We had wonderful visits with family and friends.

However...

I encountered a couple public restrooms with signage that could easily qualify as Observed Absurdities™.

Behold:

I know this looks like a simple case of wanting to protect plumbing and keep the janitorial staff happy. What you can't know by just looking at this sign is that it was posted in an outhouse...a permanent pit toilet...a non-flushable hole in the ground with a seat. My first thought when I saw this was that "extremely difficult" doesn't really speak to the heart of the matter. How about "extremely disgusting" or "gross to the nth degree"?

Talk about restricted access! I'm pretty sure I've NEVER seen a disabled, elderly, pregnant child. 

I Have a Hate-Hate Relationship With Exercise

 

In a fit of all-too-fleeting health consciousness, I purchased lifetime access to an online exercise instruction site that promised to be quick and easy with short periods of high-intensity energy output interspersed with longer periods of low-impact activity. It sounded doable and was a reasonable price.

It also was a waste of my money.

But to be honest, it's not their fault, it's mine. When it comes to exercise regimens, I am about as unregimented as they come. Just can't turn it into a habit.

I've owned it for close to a year now and have never done anything beyond the 3-minute warm-up section. Of course, just that is enough to get me breathing with some effort and sweating with some gusto.

I can't seem to get beyond some of the goofy things the instructor says in an attempt to be encouraging:

"Awesome work."  -  Pretty sure you have no clue as to the quality of the work I'm doing.

"Really make sure that you're always breathing."  -  I'm paying for this stellar advice?

"Your back should be getting a little bit warmer here."  -  Oh yeah? And maybe your face should be getting out of mine right about now.

"Feel your core warming up as you pull your belly button in toward your spine."  -  If I could pull my belly button toward my spine, I wouldn't need to be exercising!

Still...I've heard that laughing has some of the same aerobic benefits as a good workout, so maybe this is helping after all.

Midnight Train to Frustration

 

It's hard to say anything negative about the 432nd greatest song of all time as recorded by Gladys Knight and the Pips, "Midnight Train to Georgia."

EXCEPT...

What if you read the lyric and think about Gladys trying to tell this fairly straightforward story of a guy who tried to make it in the big city but gives up, buys a ticket to go back home to Georgia, and his girlfriend makes the choice to uproot her life and follow him into the Deep South. It's a romantic tale, and Gladys wants her listeners to feel what she's feeling...but these three guys keep grabbing the mic from her and mouthing off in the middle of her sentences:

L.A. proved too much for the man
(Too much for the man, he couldn't make it)
So he's leaving a life he's come to know, ooh
(He said he's going)
He said he's going back to find
(Going back to find)
Ooh, what's left of his world
The world he left behind not so long ago

He's leaving
(Leaving)
On that midnight train to Georgia, yeah
(Leaving on the midnight train)
Said he's going back
(Going back to find)
To a simpler place and time, oh yes he is
(Whenever he takes that ride, guess who's gonna be right by his side)
I'll be with him
(I know you will)
On that midnight train to Georgia
(Leaving on a midnight train to Georgia, woo woo)
I'd rather live in his world
(Live in his world)
Than live without him in mine
(Her world is his, his and hers alone)

He kept dreaming
(Dreaming)
Ooh, that someday he'd be a star
(A superstar, but he didn't get far)
But he sure found out the hard way
That dreams don't always come true, oh no, uh uh
(Dreams don't always come true, uh uh, no, uh uh)

Gladys: Will you just shut the farnsworth UP?!!?

Observed Absurdities™ 58 - Don't Be Givin' My Cows No Hormones

 

Ever since moving UpNort to the Land of 10,000 Taxes, we have been spending less on milk by purchasing half-gallon plastic bags instead of gallon plastic jugs. Seeing bags of milk for sale was a little strange at first, but my desire for frugalosity outweighed my aversion to all things new and different.

Even though we've been buying our milk in bags for over two decades, it was just last week that I noticed this...um...interesting notice printed on the bags:

Farmer Certified rBST-Free*

*From cows not treated with rBST

Well, this certainly got my attention. What is this rBST of which we speak and why is it such a marketing-blurb-worthy thing to not treat one's cows with it?

According to the WorldWideWackfest, rBST stands for recombinant bovine somatotropin, a synthetic version of a growth hormone naturally found in cows that increases milk production. It is illegal for use in Canadian dairy cows, but is legal in the USA.

So, apparently, the Wisconsin-based dairy that produces the milk that FastStop sells in plastic bags is proud of keeping up with the Canadians. Well, yahoo-yippity.

Then I noticed a second asterisk:

There seems to be no evidence that treating cows with rBST has any effect on the milk being produced...other than the amount of it, I reckon.

So why brag about not treating your cows with rBST? It's like the dairy equivalent of saying "Our shirts have not been dried in machines." So what? As long as they're not sopping wet, I'm happy!

Pass the moo-juice, please.

#DepluralizeAFilm

 

I just saw the titular hashtag on Facebook and thought, "THERE'S a blog post for me to work on!"

Now...part of my personal turmoil is that, along with seeing the hashtag, I saw two answers, one of which I'm pretty sure I will not be able to come close to matching in cleverness. Methinks I'll save it for the end, so read on, MacDuff!

First off, the initial example from the aforementioned sighting: Jaw.

Now let's see what my own parallel thinking can come up with:

• The One Commandment
• Snow White and the Dwarf (Somehow, decreasing from seven to one makes this sound racier.)
• One Dalmatian
• Cheaper by the Single-Pack
• The Bad News Bear ("This just in, honey production reaches an all-time low. Oh bother!")

• One League Under the Sea
• Butch Cassidy All By Himself
• The Lord of the Ring: The One Tower
• One of the President's Men
• The First Sense ("I see a live person.") 

And finally, the winner from the initial Facebook post, showing a mastery of the English language and the esoteric knowledge of what a flock of crows is called:

A Crow on the Orient Express

Brilliant! 

J.R.R. Zeppelin?

 

A lot of people make a lot of noise about how the 433rd greatest song of all time, "Ramble On" by Led Zeppelin, is heavily influenced by the writings of J.R.R. Tolkein, specifically, The Lord of the Rings.

I beg to differ.

Did I say "beg"?

I did?

Well, negate that and replace that weasel word with something much stronger, like "rush" or "demand" or "the smell of week-old gym socks in the bottom of a duffel."

The source of my eagerness to rebel against the sweeping tide of critical opinion is the fact that only two lines in the song contain any specific Tolkein references:

'Twas in the darkest depths of Mordor, I met a girl so fair

But Gollum and the evil one crept up and slipped away with her

Firstly, the storyline created while using the Tolkien terms "Mordor" and "Gollum" is utterly foreign to The Lord of the Rings. So much so, lyricist Robert Plant later admitted to being embarrassed by the lines.

Secondly, the oft-repeated words of the chorus, "Ramble on," can easily be misheard as "Babylon" (a Biblical reference instead of a Tolkien one) or "Revlon" (an example of inappropriate product placement).

But mostly, I'm raising this stink because the song, "Ramblin' Man," by the Allman Brothers Band, doesn't show up anywhere on Rolling Stone's "500 Greatest Songs..." list and it just hurts my feelings that THIS song represents the verb "ramble" instead.

Flashes of Summers Forever Gone

 

Not only does the beginning of October signal the absolute end of summerlikeness and the beginning of the acceptivity of pumpkin spice-osity*, this time around the sun, I have been having flashbacks of scenes from summers in my personal past that have an extremely high likelihood of never being repeated.

• Stretching out on my back in the grass while a kitten stretches out on my belly
• Riding my bike around the countryside for hours with no helmet or shade-providing hat of any kind, no sunscreen, no water supply, and positively no supervision
• Coming home from a hard day's ride with a streak of tar splattered up the back of my white t-shirt
• Whiling away hours under a bridge, looking for frogs and tossing rocks in the "crick"
• Arranging bales in the hayloft to create two opposing castles
• Finding my brother's copy of The Naked Ape in said hayloft
• Reading the passing billboards while lying on my stomach in the over-the-cab bed of our camper.

• FlatulenceKing waking up early and driving us several miles further down the road while everyone else was still asleep.
• The bone-shocking difference between the cut-it-with-a-knife humidity outside and the meat-locker cold inside at my aunt and uncle's home in Orlando.
• Igniting farts in the driveway of that home with my brother and brother-in-law.
• Seeing our Illinois cousins once a year and being expected to behave as if We Missed Each Other So Much
• Feeling like summer was never going to end

_______
* He said, knowing full well that some flotsam of humanity have been pumpkining it to high heaven since the end of August, like Marty McFly Pete Townsending all up in the face of stunned teenagers in the Fifties.