Strange doings in Hyde county

According to local gossip there is a gentleman in rural Hyde county who has been getting his mail from the mailbox whilst dressed in nothing more than a purple speedo thong. This might be alright if there were nobody about when he got his mail, but it seems he was waiting at the mailbox when lady who delivers the RFD mail arrived with his mail.

The first time he did this she was startled but took it in stride – sometimes country folk are a bit casual about dress and the proprieties. When he did it a second time she thought that that was a bit much, so she spoke to the local law. In turn the local law visited the gentleman and forbade him being at the mailbox when the mail is delivered.

As far as I know, nothing was said about the purple speedo thong. Apparently one can wear what one likes as long as one doesn’t interfere with the Postal Service.

New words in the English language

The following has been attributed to James Nicoll:

English doesn’t so much ‘borrow’ words from other languages; it chase other languages down dark alleyways, knocks them over the head and rifles through their coat pockets for new words.

I’m not sure I believe everything I read

Recently in my perambulations about the internet I came across The Evangelical Spectator. It is, I suppose, a blog; everything on the internet is these days. It is not just your ordinary Christian Evangelical website. Consider this listing of recent articles:

• God Bless Grasshoppers
• Church Charges Admission
• Churches As Modes of Transportation
• The Atheist Diet
• Bibles For New Savings Accounts
• Profanity Damages Dress Shop
• New Car For Christians
• Please Return Joseph’s Coat of Many Colors
• First Evangelical Christian On Mars

A scientist in Kingsport, Tennessee has trained grasshoppers to eat the marijuana plant. “We’re convinced the grasshopper is our next best weapon against marijuana,” said Henry Horley. “We have tested the plan out and believe marijuana, opium and the hallucinogenic mushroom family can be eliminated entirely by training and releasing our new breed of defensive marijuana-eating grasshoppers.”

Cane toads and swimming cowboys

One of my sources for offbeat information is Slashdot.org, which describes itself as Slashdot: News for nerds. Stuff that matters. A lot of it is pretty techie (mind fodder for yours truly) but there are some bits that are satisfyingly offbeat. For example, there is:

“The Australian state government called for the army to be deployed against the invasion of toxic toads! Battalions of imported cane toads are marching relentlessly across northern Australia and the West Australian government wants soldiers to intercept the environmental barbarians. From the article: “The toads, Bufo Marinus, were introduced from South America into northeast Queensland state in the 1930s to control another pest: Beetles that were ravaging the sugar cane fields of the tropical northern coasts. But the toads now number in the millions and are spreading westward through the Northern Territory, upsetting the country’s ecosystem in their wake. Cane toads have poisonous sacs on the back of their heads full of a venom so powerful it can kill crocodiles, snakes or other predators in minutes.” More information about cane toads at Wikipedia.”

I suppose we could import some of those toxic toads for pest control of marijuana sniffing grasshoppers. You have to be careful about these things though. The pestiferous amphibians might well end up getting contact highs from the grasshoppers. The next thing you know, the next big rock band will be The Toxic Toads.

My Motto

My motto always been to take nothing for granted. The granite people evidently don’t think that way; they took $3000 for granite.

The house that isn’t done

For sundry reasons the great house project did not move forward very much during June. There are various things that went on such as a trip to DesMoines (Deb’s son is going to go to Law School at Drake – I expect to see him on the Supreme Court some day) and Old Settlers weekend. The latter is a local institution, the sort of thing that is popular in rural areas. One weekend a year is devoted to class reunions, a parade, pig wrestling in the mud, a rodeo, a demolition derby, a classic car demo, and whatever else people dream up. It gives people afar the chance to come back and freshen up their roots.

It seems that most of the towns in these here parts (or “in these hyar parts” if you want to do the accent) have an event of this sort. It’s sort of a scaled down county fair. For my science fiction friends, think of it as a convention without SF and without a hotel. This urge to return to one’s birth place is probably something deeply biological like salmon returning to their spawning site. Most of the people returning here after decades probably are no longer breeding, but the instinct is the same.

In any case not much has been done on the house. I did build a rather nice spice rack and I’ve rather (I got a special on rathers from CBS) enjoyed having the use of my kitchen again.