Author Archives: Ken Hansen

Another Year Of Awesome

Posted on by

Well kids, I may be getting older. Not that I feel old, mind you. But…

I’m sitting here at the keyboard thing,

Just thinking and remembering

That back in 1972

There she was, eyes of blue.

Initially we were just friends,

But soon we were much better friends,

And then (and now) the best of friends

Sharing awesome love that never ends.

Let’s see… reality check… 2023 minus 1972 equals 51. HOLY MOLY, I’VE KNOWN AND LOVED THIS LADY FOR 51 YEARS!!! Can this be real? Who am I? What am I doing here?? Am I really 69 years old now?? Sheesh!! And then, as an added bonus, this beautiful lady allowed me to marry her on August 21, 1973. So like, this coming Monday will be like our 50th anniversary, like you know??

Like, WOW, MAN!!

Very wow!!

For the past several months, I’ve been telling anyone who wants to listen:  “If our marriage survives until August 21, we’ll be celebrating 50 years!!” I asked my Beautiful Girlfriend if there was any chance our marriage would make it for a couple more days, and she gave me that “Whadda you, nuts??” kind of look and said, “I’ll think we’ll be OK.” So… YES!!! We’re gonna be married 50 years this Monday!!

Can you tell I’m pleased about this?

Now for you youngsters (of all ages), just want you to know that this marriage business did not always come naturally to us. We both perpetrated several weepings and gnashings of teeth at various times. Slowly but surely, we began to develop skills that made our relationship endure. Lots of give and take. Lots of goofs and forgiveness. Lots of problems, but thankfully, lots of working on solutions. There, I said it: it took work for us to get where we are today. As my Lovely Bride says, “It took grace, dignity, and compromise.” And you know what?? I wouldn’t trade it for anything in the world.

These days, it feels like we’ve been together our whole lives. We are both very OK with that notion. Heck, we’ve been best buds since were were 17!! Childhood memories are still there of course, but almost becoming a flash in the pan.  We basically grew up together.

So I want to thank Those People In Heaven for allowing us to be so fortunate. Life is very good you see. We are not financially wealthy, but we certainly aren’t poor either. We are blessed.

As you can probably tell by now, I get a little mooshy around this time of year. I’m so SO grateful because I have everything I’ve ever wanted in life. I sometimes verbalize it to my Beautiful Honey Pie.  “Honey,” I’ll say, “all I ever wanted was the love of a Beautiful Woman, a nice family, a nice home, a little bit of land (we have 5 acres), and a kick-ass stereo.”

Mission accomplished!

The moral of the story: all the work has really paid off. We have difficulty remembering the last time we got on each other’s nerves.  And no, that’s not the onset of Alzheimer’s disease. The fruit of all this relationship stuff is this: we share a very strong spiritual bond, and have lived harmoniously pretty much all the time for quite a few years now. She even lets me kiss her! Often! Pretty cool since she’s The Most Beautiful Woman In The Universe (all other women are the second most beautiful… just FYI). As I said earlier, we are not really wealthy, but I consider myself one of the richest people on the planet.

Lots of music has touched our hearts over the years, and I often sing some of our favorite songs out loud to my Beautiful Girlfriend. Well OK, I sing them pretty much wherever I am while I have her in my thoughts. Often loudly.

For this week’s video fun, I’ve posted some examples.

Peace, Love, and Happiness to you All!!

Tomorrow Or The Next Day

Posted on by

So… we’ll be getting visitors soon. Friends and relatives will be in town, and many will want to come visit our little piece of Heaven in Beautiful Bear Swamp. We’ve had several months to prepare for their arrival, but there are still some last minute things to do of course. Things like painting the shed. Weeding the garden. Getting the carpets cleaned. Making sentence fragments. You know, all that cool stuff that should have been done months or at least weeks ago, but we have lives and important things to do like enjoy time with grandchildren and visit with friends that live nearby oh and cooking and cleaning and all the other life stuff that, if enumerated completely and in great detail, would make for a much longer run-on sentence; so maybe I’ll just stop pretty soon but maybe not right now, oh well yes I think that’s enough.

Don’t you agree?

We’re putting on a bit of a shindig to celebrate our 50th wedding anniversary. Fifty years!! How did that happen?? Well it happened just like they say in those recovery places: one day at a time. Sure doesn’t feel like it’s been that long. On the other hand, it really does feel like my Beautiful Girlfriend and I have been sweethearts / best friends / lovers for basically all our lives. Childhood memories are but a flash in the pan these days. Of course, we became best friends when we were children (we were both 17), so practically speaking we really have been together all our lives.

We grew up together!

Thankfully, the chores we’d like to get done before our visitors arrive will not even remotely resemble the absolute chaos that often ensued while preparing for something like our kids’ high school graduation open houses. Those were The Before Times. One of my “favorite” memories was the last minute disposal of a very large pile of lumber. Well, OK, it sat outside and exposed to the elements so long that much of it became a very large pile of rotten wood. They’d toss boards and planks into the dumpster at work, and Kenny would go pick “the nice ones” out and take them home. Into the carefully stacked lumber pile they’d go; waiting for that Kenny guy to do something with them. Surprisingly, some of it actually got used! And of course much of the pile was ignited a few days before graduation as a hefty onslaught of carbon molecules ejected into the atmosphere.

Ya, we burned it up. Holy Carbon Footprint, Batman!

Then we looked inside the garage where the food tables were to be placed. “OH HOLY CARP!!” we exclaimed in unison. “HOW ARE WE GONNA CLEAN THIS MESS UP IN TIME?!?!?!” Not sure who did it (it was me), but some noodle-headed wombat very gradually touched off a clutter bomb in my garage. Shelves somehow got (very gradually but effectively) filled with boxes of nails, tools, extension cords, drain snake thingies, air filters, spray paint… the list could go on and on. Not in any special order mind you. Well let’s hear it for my brother-in-law. He gave us a marvelous solution: “Run a rope between the studs and hang a big new tarp across!!” It’s a truly amazing way to make a mess invisible. Those were very stressful events, those graduation open houses from 1996 and 2001.

Is the mess from the aforementioned clutter bomb still there? Yes. Yes it is.

We’ll need to rent a refrigerator to house all the leftovers from the shindig. And yes, you really can rent a refrigerator!! So it’s gonna go in the garage… in front of a new tarp. There will be “restricted areas” where visitors are not welcome to tread. They won’t know it, but we sure will. Thankfully, there’s no pile of rotten lumber. The house is pretty presentable inside. The shed needs some paint, and there are other jobs to be done; but we’ll be OK. We’ve gotten better at just realizing that this is just part of who we are. We’re not slobs, we’re Americans, and we have too doggone much stuff. We are better at not shaming ourselves for any woulda – shoulda – coulda nonsense. All that does is spoil an otherwise great day. So we’ll tidy up where we can, and hide the rest (hee hee).

I’d really love to work on this procrastination disease I’ve worked so hard to acquire over the years. But that will have to wait till tomorrow or the next day.

Oh, and if any of you visitors are reading this, please erase the preceding text from your brains.

Thank you.

Maybe we could get Grampy to come help!!

Sniff The Dog Wisely

Posted on by

Warning:  the following installment of Frappy Hiday contains large amounts of nonsense and intestinal worms.  Do not read any further if you are prone to sleeping with rubber bands in your cereal or have an allergic reaction to sense that makes no things. 

What the heck kind of title is that?  Anyhow???   Is this going to be one of those stupid dog butt sniffing stories?? Come to think of it, I’m not sure I know any dog butt sniffing stories.  I could maybe make one up, but there’s really nothing you can buy with three nickels anymore.  So why would I sniff the butt’s dog?  Our friend Musky da was very good at sniffing a butt’s dog in his day, and he seemed to be very intent with this activity.  Does this mean that sniff dogging is similar to wise wondering?

No, this is an adventure in stress relief.  You see, I’m being a bit indulgent here… and I’m going to just crack open a jar of petroleum jelly and a box of crackers, and make a nice snack that not only sticks to your ribs but lubes the bones and coats the skin with a nice shiny paragraph on Al Gore and his TV Dinners.  Then I’ll wash it all down with a nice tall glass of dry ice.   Life has presented numerous “challenges” of late, ok?  I placed “challenges” in “quotes” because there are some “people” who are getting on my “nerves” and I would love to “choke” them but I don’t want to go to “jail” just because the “kakaheads” are making me “crazy.”  You “know” what I “mean??”

Then we have “those people over there” who seem bell lent for heather to “drive me up a tree” and I don’t even have a seat belt for that tree or anything.  No air bags neither.  No smell phone to stick in my ear so I can drive like a zombie and crash into a giant salami.  I mean hey, if someone is determined to “tree me up a drive,” the very least that person could do is provide air conditioning and a hybrid engine that gets well over 93 miles to a gallon of ice cream.

Am I right or am I wrong??

Of course I am!!

I’m keenly aware that the only “solution” to letting someone “up me tree a drive” is to tune out their bullroni and strongly suggest that nasal cheese insertion be performed.  The instructions would come in a format very much like this:

“Hey you with the face!  Remember that one time when you decided to wear your smell phone on your head to drive irreverently during thundersnow and big fat swollen dead raccoons??  Are you in the want of pickled toilet paper?  I am now urging you vehemently to cram large cheese globs in your nose to enhance your breathing!!  And while you’re at it, why don’t you place your tongue in that electrical box over yonder??  That box needs testing, and you’ve just the tongue to do it!”

This, I am sure, is the only true way to diplomatically tell  flame-headed wombats just how wonderful you feel about  their actions.

Don’t you agree??

Of course I do!

I was also very compressed at the driving ability of one total bark-eating numbskull just a few yargons ago while retrieving our grandsons for a nice weekend of “Lick The Thistles.”.  There I was, careening down the expressway in my 2014 racing Toyota Sienna, and going the legal speed limit or even less, and some tonk-mookler decided to pass me with less than 2 millimeters clearance between his bumper and my front fender with no regard for the safety of any insects or other humans.  I mean, this tampon-brain forced me into the evasive “holy cow” maneuver.  Then of course he (or she??) proceeded to cut off numerous other innocent sidebanders while zipping in and out of traffic.   Now THAT’S intelligence, don’t ya think?  Seedless to nay, I had a few opinions which instantly arose from my brain and out of my mouth as I flailed the steering wheel about while I tried to prevent the kersmooshing of automotive metal molecules and finely crafted petrochemicals.

Now, believe me, I understand that people don’t intentionally do things TO me, they just DO THINGS.  But sometimes I just let it get to me, and then I go find a bug and try to teach it to sing karaoke.  And of course, trying to teach a bug to sing karaoke is not very considerate at all.  I try to be tolerant of people who are less than wonderful…   I think I’m getting better at being nice these days; but while my eyes and mouth are being pleasantly neutral, my mind is screaming at the top of its lungs:

“HOLY MACKEREL, WHO GAVE YOU THE RIGHT TO BREATHE ON THIS PLANET??  I’M BECOMING CONVINCED THAT YOU NEED TO EAT BARK AND POOP AT THE MOON!!”

This is not very kind, so I’m very grateful that I don’t often react with nastiness to those type of folks.  Anymore.  Used to be I would actually SAY  the things that my mouth wanted to spit, but then I’d have to apologize and offer expensive candy or something.  Maybe that’s part of getting old enough to remember when the Beatles came over on the Mayflower, I dunno.  But I DO know that stress is a very small pair of pajamas that seek dogfood in a jar of jellybeans.  So the next time I get angry, please remind me that there really is a bus that has one way tickets to Indianapolis.  I don’t really want to go there, but if I never run away again it will be the next time.

I had an ice cream cone today.  That was helpful. And in spite of the intense heat, most of this tasty treat went into my mouth.

Speaking of stress… wasn’t I speaking of stress??  I’m very grateful that I don’t work for a living anymore.  But if I did, I’d certainly seek a job where the stress is zero minus 173 and you get paid for loafing. Bud Abbott and Lou Costello did a nice bit about just that very subject…

Perseid Meteor Showers: Snap, Crackle, KABOOM!!

Posted on by

Please do not be frightened, for what I am about to relate is merely cosmic truth that has occurred annually for at least 12 and maybe even 47,000. I just don’t know. But it’s true and that’s all there is to it. OK?? So don’t bother me about this ever again or I’ll start up that dead bug over there. You see that dead bug? Well, to the untrained eye, that bug is dead. But all I need to do is insert these tiny little electrodes into his vinkabules, apply the 3,047 volts from my electric fingernail removal tool, and he’ll be making zucchini bread in no time. And it will be on your conscience for bugging me about all this cosmic truth business. I hope you’re happy now.

So are you ready to receive this information without interrupting the camouflage now? I should hope so.

Just sit back and relax, and be aware that everything you hold dear is in danger of exploding and being zoofled to smithereens. “Of course,” some of you are probably yelling, “he must be talking about the Perseid meteor showers!!” Oh… none of you were yelling that?? Well, maybe you are instead quietly saying, “what’s the deal with this guy… does he eat Legos or something??” Well, for those of you who are saying that, the answer is yes, and my Lower Jaw Lego Chewing Machine is very tired so please be nice.

OK. Back to this horrible cosmic truth I’ve been ranting about. The Perseid meteor shower is an annual occurrence, and this year the best times to look for shooting stars is after midnight from mid July (now) through mid August.  According to Space.com, (<– click the link!) this year’s  Perseid meteor shower will peak around August 13.  Seriously. It happens every year around this time.  Look for them to come out of the northeastern sky. You may see as many as two per minute, depending on how many Burger Kings or other light pollution sources you have in your neighborhood. You could always ask them to turn the lights off, but they may not care about any stinking shooting stars. Gotta waste energy to make money, you know. Gotta get that global warming furnace stoked up so my next pair of tennies burst into flames as I stroll down the sidewalk during a heat wave. Thank you very much Mr. Businessman Energy Wasting People Who Leave The Lights On All Stinking Night Long!!

Alright, I’m sorry. I digress. Something I normally never do…

I must now take this time to please ask you to protect yourselves during the meteor showers. Always, always wear a fireproof bathrobe while you’re outside viewing meteor showers. You may also want to flip on the force field to protect your house from the snap, crackle, KABOOM always never happens when an 85 ton meteorite lands on your chimney.  What??  You don’t have a force field???  Ah HAH!  You sold it at the flea market didn’t you??  Have you no science brains?  You won’t catch me out there without fireproof clothing… And although we don’t have a force field, I have this aluminum bat right here.  Yup, I’m gonna be up on the roof with my modified 55 gallon steel drum overalls, bat in hand, always at the ready.  For a helmet, I modified a nice Revere Ware pot with a pillow stuffed inside. Fireproof Noggin Protection Device. When one of those fireballs puts a bead on my house, I’m gonna take that bat and smack it back into Who Knows Where.  

 I also have a heat resistant meteorite gauge mounted on the fence, right next to my rain gauge.  I want to make sure I know exactly how many inches of meteors we got during the meteor showers.  Actually the meteorite gauge is there for a selfish motive… my Honey Pie didn’t want me to get a force field because she says it’s too expensive.  I guess I’ll have the last laugh when that meteorite gauge is full of smoldering bits in the morning. Right??  Somebody say yes….

Well, hopefully you will all have clear skies and be able to see one of nature’s wonders.  There have been some years when the Perseids have been a very awesome show.  At any rate, I’ll be up on the roof, aluminum bat in hand, hoping to God that we don’t have any lightning.  

Might mess up my hair.

Perhaps a nice trip to Mars after the meteor shower…

Tips For Travel

Posted on by

Lots of people are traveling these days, and in order for your travels to be comfortable and wibbedy-boo, I’m feeling compelled to issue compulsory warnings to any and all travelers, which of course means, if you’re getting ready to travel, whether you know it or not, you’ll likely need input from me, the person, who offers the following tips on how to travel in this short but long (by Kakahead standards) run-on sentence I hereby bestow upon you all with great instability.

Therefore, I strongly urge every living thing to embrace the following travel tips with great enthusiasm:

1 – Please, for the 328th time, please do NOT tape paperclips to your fingernails just before passing through airport security. This causes very loud brooping alarms and the security people will wiggle their eyebrows at you for at least 13 milliseconds.

R – Always ensure you keep your optical nerves unclogged and free of compost flavored radio components.

5 – Be vigilant of germ bearing strangers. Does anyone appear to be drooling? For all you know, they may be infected with Wasabi Olfactory Ouchy Disorder (WOOD). This is easily transmitted in close quarters; so if you see someone drooling, avoid helping them blow the WOOD snot out of their nostrils.

5n- Other nasty diseases that are readily spreadily are: Tingly Or Otherwise Twittering Hairs (TOOTH) that seem to take on a life of their own when they leave your neighbor’s scalp; Funky Armpit Stinky Times (FAST) which disable your sniffing glands after causing brief fainting spells, and Belly Area Regurgitation Flicks (BARF) which… well… urrrp… occckkk…. arrrggghhh get away!! Get AWAY!!

Q – When traveling to other lands, please try to learn at least a few phrases of the native language. For example, in Germany, one might stand on a busy street corner and shout: “Mein Onkel hat noch mal sein Klavier gegessen!!” English translation: “My uncle has eaten his piano again!!” Now if you are in a Spanish speaking country, a proper introduction to new friends could come in the form of: “Mi casa es muy apestoso!!” English: “My house is very stinky!!” The most enjoyable part of these cultural experiences, I’m sure, will be the reactions of those to whom you are speaking.

I have many other artificially flavored travel suggestions, but I don’t want to overload your noggins with such vital information right now. You may e-mail me at u.r.stinky@wuttagoof.com; or of course you can call Snern, my pet wombat; who screens all my calls with the diligence of someone who has never existed.

In the meantime, I would like to leave you with this parting thought: don’t try to build your own plane like Mickey Mouse did. Might cause problems…

Attack Of The Wooly Aphids!!

Posted on by

I grew up in a culture where “man has dominion over the earth,” in other words, I was surrounded by the all too ignorant view that humans had the right to tell Mother Nature what to do. If there was some creature that didn’t suit our liking, it must be controlled or killed. Not much effort was made to learn about what the creature might be or what role it might play in the fabric of the Universe. Consequently, as a child I did lots of nasty things to various insects and other creepy crawlies. Some of those errant deeds could, I suppose, be attributed to being a boy. As I look back, though, I’m convinced I was being taught to be oblivious to the ways of Nature.

Let’s take spiders, for example. Take them!! PLEASE!! No, not really. Spiders are my friends these days; although I still get the heebie jeebies when they crawl on me by surprise. In the past, I’d kill them on sight. After learning more, I realized they are a vital part of our ecosystem. I see them scurrying about in the garden while I’m weeding the veggie patch, and I make sure they have safe travels. They eat lots of pests that would love to eat my veggies!

Mosquitoes… not my friends. We live in a swamp, which always provides us with a healthy mosquito crop during the warm months. I kill them when they come near or if they bite; but I do NOT spray the yard as a remedy. Why? Because yard insecticide sprays kill much more than mosquitoes. They also kill predatory insects like dragonflies that eat the mosquitoes. And of course they kill bees and other pollinators. Not sure why the Universe decided we need mosquitoes, but I do know that they provide food for lots of other creatures. There are oodles of other examples but I think it’s time to switch a bit and start following the lead of the title of this silly blog entry.

So what about this silly Attack Of The Wooly Aphids??

Well there I was, 676 ft above sea level (I looked up our elevation), minding my own business, when a little white fluffy thing fell from the trees. This started happening about a week or so ago, and now we have hundreds of little white fluffy tufts all over the place… on the sidewalk, the lawn, the deck. No idea what they were. We guessed maybe the trees were sending out little floofy seed things like what we got in early spring; but they didn’t look the same at all. Well then I was walking out on my way to the garden and one of these fluffy thing floated past my nostrils. Actually it did more than float. It was flying. The little fluffy white thing had a tiny pilot and was heading westward!!

On to the interwebs I went to search for answers. Didn’t really take much time before I learned that our little fluffy piloted zoomers (well they don’t really zoom…) are in fact wooly aphids. Say huh?? Yes, that’s right. They are wooly aphids. More specifically, they are wooly alder aphids. They live like other aphids, which means they are plant vampires. Plant sap is their food. They need to feed on both maple trees and then alders to complete their life cycle, hence the name. When they’ve had their fill of maple sap, they fly about in search of alders. Not sure what purpose Mother Nature has set aside for these interesting creatures, but everything I’ve read about them says they are not harmful to the trees. They are, however, an important food for natural predators like lady bugs, lacewings, and predatory wasps. So yet another example of an insect that’s probably not well understood, but just because they’re aphids doesn’t mean we need to kill them. I found a close up picture of one for your enjoyment. Don’t be afraid, they are WAY smaller than what you see in the picture. It’s a close up, remember?

So next time you see a little tiny fluffy thing flying around, don’t worry. They are not really attacking. But hey, maybe the title caught your interest?

Worth a try.

Well let’s see what kind of silly bug videos are out there…

I Have Weed-Jungle-Osis: Leaf Me Alone, I’m Dusting

Posted on by

Holy Moly, we got no rain at all for many days / weeks / almost a month so I planted lots of seeds and some transplants and used the sprinkler to water and that’s OK to keep things alive but it doesn’t do squiddly-dot to make the garden flourish although some of the stuff began to take off a bit and then we were blessed with some rain and KABOOM everything is growing and boy howdy I went outside to check the weeds today and I’ll finish this very long run-on sentence by saying the weeds are doing GREAT!!

I’ve been known to complain about how weedy the garden is; and my Beautiful Girlfriend Wife Lady is very tolerant of my whining. She just says, “Oh well!!  We always get food!!”  The garden, was, is, and probably always shall be a balancing act between normal chores and family stuff.

And that’s very OK.

So you know what I’m doing, right? Yes!! I’m staying very busy with the Leaf Brigade! What? Never heard of the Leaf Brigade? Well neither have I, because I just made it up. I’ve been busy weeding… chopping many weeds with my hoe, and pulling many others by hand. Some weeds will die after being uprooted. Those I just lay down on the soil. Others, like quack grass, are more stubborn, and go in a bucket so I can let them be sunburned to death on top of the compost pile. After weeding, I water where the weeds were removed and cover with a nice thick layer of leaves for mulch. Those I mentioned earlier, the weeds that die when uprooted will feed the worms after I lay the mulch down. And of course the worms will poop in the soil and that feeds the plants.

Yep, the plants really love worm poop. How do I know this? I ask them of course. “How ya doin’ today, Corn?” “Doin’ good Ken… had a nice bowl of worm poop for breakfast.” Well OK maybe they don’t really say that.

Well I got the corn and the potatoes weeded and mulched; now it’s time to attack the beds in the middle of the garden.  Before the rain, I saw a couple weeds… no big deal.  Then came the smoke from all those horrible Canadian wildfires.  Not sure about you, but when the air is very unhealthy outside but pretty good inside, I just don’t go outside much.  That of course resulted in a very nice crop of pretty large weeds camouflaging the veggie plants.  I plant my veggies in beds, with things like broccoli and Brussels sprouts bordered by Swiss chard and beets.  When the weeds are big, one must be very careful not to uproot any veggie seedlings that are trying to make a go of it.  I carefully yank the ones that are not too close, and take a pair of scissors to snip the ones that will rip up veggie roots if I yank them.  Today everything looked like a miniature forest of weeds and food plants. Rather than replant everything (although some of it may be), I water first, then carefully remove the weeds. After the weeds are pulled, it’s time to sprinkle the leaf dust for mulch.

Do what now??

Yes friends, I made leaf dust today. Wouldn’t be the first time, won’t be the last. You see, I’m one of those weirdos who uses leaves all over the place in the garden. I literally take a lawn mower and mow the leaf pile to grind them up. Then I sift the chopped leaves dust through a sifter I made that sits on top of the wheelbarrow.  I like to share pictures of this stuff, so click each picture for a better view if you’re so inclined.

Sifter I build all by myself!

Leaf Dust!

The end result: Leaf Dust! Delicious with milk and sugar and a few slices of banana on top. NO!! It’s for the plants; where it’s too crazy to try to place mulch between the many tiny food plants. If I don’t weed, I ain’t a gonna get no food. And if I don’t mulch, same as it is now, I’ll get lots and LOTS of weeds.

Weeds are OK, but all those veggie plants are a bit more delicious. Don’t you agree?

Well, at least I don’t have the same garden problems as Porky Pig…

Fast Lane Follies

Posted on by

Well I suppose I’m overdue to express my sadness by crying in my dog food about the driving ninnies. I’m really loving summer though… the lack of snow means we don’t have to worry about sliding into the ditch as we leave our driveway. No more hitting the windshield with a sledgehammer to remove those pesky chunks of ice. Nope… these days we can crank the windows DOWN and crank the tunes UP. Coolness!

Unfortunately, with every silver cloud comes a grey lining. Warm weather kicks in a well known ailment in some people. Officially, I just named this disease auto-idiotica, and many of you know this age-old affliction as, “hey you with the Cracker Jacks driver’s license!!”

You know what I mean. Stupid, flameheaded wombats that believe they’re the only ones on the road. You’re in their way, so watch carefully. These people have dog breath and improper grooming habits, and are EVERYWHERE. Some symptoms are: weaving in and out of traffic, severe tailgate-itis, driving 130 mph over the limit, and passing on the right on a two lane road. At intersections. While honking. Although they are ignorant of the fact, idiot drivers have chicken lips, and are known to cavort with barnyard animals during Mardi Gras.

Used to be a time when moronic motorists were restricted to the male population. Unfortunately, however, women are learning from us dudes, and are beginning to do the “tailgate-till-you-move” dance when you’re going less than 85 mph in the right lane on the expressway. It never matters that you’re already going five over the limit and are sanely going past Grandma and Grampa Sightseer. But as far as numbers, dumdum boy drivers still far outnumber dodo girl drivers.

I’m still truly compressed by the number of mush-minded monkeys that try to pull the trim off my car as they fly past me on the expressway. Hey, the limit in Michigan is already 70. Nobody really needs to go more than 75, ok? It just ain’t safe! Sure, you can go, but try to safely miss that deer or broken car. Maybe I’m getting to be an old fart. At least some “kids” (30 and younger) would label me so. But because I’m over 60 I remember the high speed limits from the beforetimes. Before the Arab oil embargo (say wha??). A lot of people raced around back then, and ended up being “dead on time.”

Very sad, the road rage that is spreading these days. Too many people in a terrible hurry. And of course if you are “in their way” they will show the likes of you. Especially if you drive cautiously like I do; meaning I usually try to observe those crazy “Speed Limit” signs. I can almost hear them…

“Watch this, Mr. SlowPoke Minivan Cruise Control Person! Watch while I remove a few thousand miles worth of wear by vaporizing the surface of my tires! Watch how well I can ruin my transmission! Ha ha! I shall show the likes of you! I’ll accelerate wildly so I can tailgate the next jerkface who has the nerve to drive courteously!! Then I’ll pass on the right, and also on the left. But just to show you I mean business, I’ll wait for oncoming traffic and barely pull back in on time! Ha ha! I listen to the COOLEST music very loudly and am ruining my hearing with 92 inch woofers! Boy are you stupid!!  And if you dare to look my way, I’ll display to your face one of my more memorable fingers!!”

Such intelligent beings are often mystified when they receive a ticket. After all, it was not their fault they were going 84 that day, because that cop is NEVER there before! Or… they run the same stop sign all the time, BECAUSE THEY LIVE THERE and there’s NEVER ANY TRAFFIC. Oh, and not to forget the folks who weave and poke along like they’re drunk. Some really ARE drunk, but the others are texting.

I don’t want the reader to get any funny ideas about the possibility that reckless driving scares me or anything. It PETRIFIES me. Wanna know why? Because I used to be a Mr. Moron Motorist! Been there, done that! Thank God I never hurt anyone. I did, however, manage to rack up many tickets in younger days. Too many. But boy, the insurance company was happy with me!! I wanted to continue driving, and they were only too happy to take lots of my money in exchange for minimal coverage.

Lucky for me, I finally learned; albeit the hard way. Haven’t had so much as a parking ticket since 1982. This is a good thing. I can breathe much more easily, and so can my wallet. It’s always empty anyway, but at least it’s not red when I put a nice, crisp dollar bill in there.

So, I can spot ’em a mile away now, and know pretty much what they’re gonna do when they get up near me. I just let them go by. Safer that way. I paid my dues, and I’m sure they’ll pay theirs in one form or another.

Anybody seen the keys to my Slow Poke Minivan Cruise Control Zooming Machine?

Folks just need to chill out and slow down… something strange happens to the weirdo drivers once they get behind the wheel… they become Motor Maniacs like in the first video.  The whole zooming mania reminds me of an old Queen song.,”Dead On Time;”  the lyrics for which appear in the second video.  Take care folks… and please, BE SAFE.

Free Compost!! And All The Trash You Can Eat…

Posted on by

I love to grow vegetables. And my favorite way to grow vegetables is the “natural” way, which means I don’t put any artificial additives in the soil. There was a time when I relied on manure for fertilizer, but I’ve switched to pure compost.

Well, mostly pure.

We have a compost pile, and that receives all of our kitchen waste: vegetable snippings, coffee grounds, egg shells. Absolutely no meat… meat in the compost is bad juju from the nasty microbes that eat animal flesh. Fish stuff is OK if you put it straight in the ground before planting, but no bird or mammal meat. In addition to all the kitchen waste, a healthy helping of leaves and all the weeds I yank from the garden go into the compost pile. Some folks take a pitch fork and turn the pile occasionally to speed up the composting action; but I usually end up just letting the creepy crawlies chow down and make the compost for me.

This practice has turned me into an avid leaf collector. My “prize leaf ” is a 1971 maple that really makes me proud. A nice bowl of leaves are really great with milk and sugar too! High fiber.

OK, I may be fooling… But seriously folks, I used to traipse around the neighborhood and pick up bagged leaves in the fall. Many, many trailer loads. People tell me, “Oh God!! Don’t use oak leaves!!! They have too much acid!!” And I reply, “No!! This is bull mahookey old fairy tale nonsensical rumor badness!! There’s no such thing as bad leaves in the garden!!” And they cry and roll on the ground.

Or not.

Oak leaves have a high calcium content, and are pretty substantial compared to leaves like maple that break down more quickly. Earthworms LOVE oak leaves, and earthworm manure is alkaline, so a balancing effect occurs when oak leaves are added to the soil. Back to running around the neighborhood to collect leaves, these days I’m blessed with friends who bring me leaves from their yard and dump them out behind the garden for me. And if I go through all those (which I often do) I make “emergency runs” to the local transfer station, which we affectionately call “the dump.” People bring their leaves there, and the pile even gets turned regularly so there’s lots of compost available, free for the taking.

I have only one complaint about all these free composting items. Trash. There is always at least some trash in the leaves, whether they come from the dump or are given to me by my friends. Sometimes I find “interesting” items, like soda cans, candy wrappers, hunks of Styrofoam, even found the remains of a cell phone once. My very “favorite” type of trash are the fake leaves that get mixed in with the real ones. I’ll bet plastic leaves take a few thousand years to break down. Oh and on a side note: you know those little sticky labels on green peppers, avocados and the like from the grocery store? I’ve been guilty of forgetting to remove them before the remains go in the compost. Then of course I find them later, either while scooping compost during planting time or yanking weeds. I’m pretty sure those stupid labels will be here when the archaeologists come.

I’ll continue to use the dump as my primary source of compost material. So to my dear friends, and to all who bring their leaves to the dump, thank you. But please, keep the trash at home.

It doesn’t just doesn’t make good fertilizer.

And now, a video that’s not a video, but a song. Our grandson would express frustration on cartoon night when I’d slip in a music video; and his annoyed voice would ring out, “Papa, you like songs!!” Anyway, this is from a band from yesteryear called Spirit. The name of the song is “Fresh Garbage.” And the lyrics are…

Fresh garbage
Fresh garbage

Look beneath your lid some morning,
See those things you didn’t quite consume.
The world’s a can for your fresh garbage.

Just (Not) My Style

Posted on by

I am really enjoying retirement.  I am so comfortable, I can wear my “Sunday Go To Meetin'” garden grubs to the grocery store and not give a flying mahookey who sees me running around in dirty rags.  In fact, just yesterday I had to make a quick grocery run after I got done crawling around in the garden.  While I was grabbing a few necessities, I had something of a fashion flashback that happened back in the old days when I was still working.

So there I was, in a Hard Day’s Night, working like a dog, with no barking, walking around the factory after walking between the Work Buildings and having enjoyed the cool air of West Michigan spring while in my denim jacket, when suddenly I stopped to talk to some fellow associates; but not all that suddenly because I left no skid marks on the concrete floor or nothing, and long before I wrote this run-on sentence (because I was at work, not writing like I am now) a friend walked up to me with a large grin on his face and said, “Hey Ken, don’t you know that denim jackets have been out of style for 20 years?”

Being the good natured fellow I am, I smiled while shaking his hand and quickly replied, “I really don’t give a ship (or something like that…)!!” Then one of the other associates said, “You’re one of the good guys, you can wear whatever you want and it would be just fine.”  Well being thought of as a “good guy” was nice to hear, but being the silly fellow I am, I smiled again and said, “How about I put on a pink tutu and some OSHA approved safety ballet slippers?? Would that be OK??” One of the associates eyebrows kinda came together as he looked at the ground; but the one who called me “one of the good guys” chuckled and said, “Yeah sure!!”

Again at work, I had yet another instance of fashion consciousness. A friend of mine came up to me and said, “Nice shirt!!” Took a little pointing on his part for me to notice that he and I were wearing shirts with nearly identical fabric. “Oh!!” I said, finally getting the point. “Yeah, I’m guessing mine is a thrift store special.” He gave me a puzzled look. I thought about that much later, wondering if I insulted him. But we are good friends so I’m pretty sure he didn’t take it too seriously. Besides, he found it amusing when I said, “Yeah my wife buys all my shirts at the thrift stores. This one was probably 99 cents. Well OK it’s kinda nice, maybe she paid $2 for this one.”

As you may have gathered by now, I’m not exactly in tune with GQ or whatever that hoidy toidy men’s magazine is called. I just don’t give a hoot about fashion. Some proof of that is:

1) I just had to google “GQ” to make sure it still was what I thought it was; and

R) I still like having very long hair, even though it’s only growing well on the sides of my head (I plan to till the top under and try to grow a new crop); so that’s like 40 years out of style, and finally

&) I rarely paid attention to what the work shirt looked like in the morning. My fashion combo consisted of a pair of blue jeans and a “business casual” shirt.

And yes, Virginia (or Vern), I stuffed my shirt pocket with my smell phone, my eye glasses case, a pen, and maybe a small screwdriver. Oh and not to forget that’s where my badge hung.

People see me from miles away and say, “NERD ALERT!! OLD HIPPIE NERD ALERT!!!”

Guilty as charged.

I did, however, try to make sure all the buttons were buttoned, my fly was zipped up, and my “gig line” was straight. For those who were never in the military, a “gig line” is correct when the seam of your shirt, your belt buckle, and your fly are all in a straight line from top to bottom. If you didn’t have that just so in basic training, you got gigged. Nobody likes to get gigged. Funny how old habits stick with you.

So the oldest habit of mine that sticks with me is I just don’t care about fashion. Fortunately my Beautiful Girlfriend keeps my garments acceptably coordinated when we have to play dress up for a wedding or whatever. Fun to see the new fashion stuff sometimes though, kind of like going to the carnival!!

I’m just not hip, folks. I’m an old hippie who doesn’t care about hip. Not even sure what the current expression for “hip” might be!! And I don’t give a flying mahookey!! So there!!

As the folks from the Tower of Power said so eloquently all those years ago (1973 in the video that follows), “what is hip? Tell me, tell me if you think you know.” Then later in the song is my favorite line: “What’s hip today might become passe.”

So I’m just not in style and that’s very OK with me. My Beautiful Girlfriend, on the other hand, is “Just My Style.”

So kids, two videos today. Tower of Power with “What Is Hip?” is first but isn’t displayed like other videos I’ve linked to in the past.  That’s because I usually embed them here, but this time Youtube said “embedding disabled by request.”  So just click the link to get the Tower of Power.  Nice performance by them on Soul Train.

The second one is in honor of my Beautiful Girlfriend, who will always be “Just My Style” like this song from Gary Lewis and the Playboys.

Peace!! (Now that’s ALWAYS in style!!)

Click below for “Just My Style.”