Tag Potpourri

Wyizit?

Michael 8 Comments
Last week I was hit with a bad case of the wyizits. It started with a song that got trapped in my head and couldn’t find it’s way out. And all day long I was asking myself, “Why is it that only the annoying songs get stuck in your head?” Seriously, do you ever walk around all day with the comforting sounds of the opening movement of Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata? No, it’s always “Na, Na, Hey, Hey, Kiss Him Goodbye” or if you’re in that classical mood, the 1812 Overture but ending with a hearty “Hi ho Silver!” So I started wondering, quite unconsciously and seemingly unstoppingly, about other wyizits, howcomes, and hoosedsos with an occasional wydont and one random watzitcalled.
 
Why is it that people are now walking down the middle of the street eschewing the safety of the sidewalk for the chaos of life among motorized vehicles? Not only are they walking down the middle of the street they are doing it with eyes firmly focused on their hand held cell phones, doubly taking their chances among the cars being driven by likewise distracted phone gawkers. And to make it more challenging, every so often, the street walker (apologies to the professional ranks) just stops in mid stride (if it can be called a stride – perhaps mid-shuffle) until just as unexpectedly begins moving again.
 
There were many others equally well thought, mentally mulled, and eventually determined to be forever unanswered questions of life as we know it. Here is a sampling.
 
QuestionHow come a vegan or vegetarian thinks nothing of announcing “I haven’t eaten a piece of meat for 35 years” but then spends 20 minutes explaining what I’m missing out on when I just happen to mention that I tried kale years ago and just don’t like it?
 
Who said a quarter pound is the right size for a hamburger?
 
 
Why don’t cat owners take their pets out for a walk?
 
What’s it called when you eat breakfast cereal for a midnight snack?
 
Why is it that birds always know when I wash my car? 
 
Why is it that celebrities thinks the ability to memorize the lines of learned person character give them the knowledge of a real learned person without the need for 12 years of education, training, and research?
 
How come none of the people in pictures of Panama are wearing wide brimmed hats? 
 
Why is it that athletes think I care at all about anything they have to say?”
 
How come the printer always run out of ink two-thirds of the way through the One Important Document I have to print this year?
 
Who said pajama bottoms aren’t acceptable business casual attire?
 
How come nobody else recognizes my infallibility?
 
Why is it that in surveys, applications, and other instruments that bother to ask does a third generation Asian, Latin, or Pacific Islander get a box to check but a first generation Italian is “No?”
 
How come a tian and a tangine aren’t the same? Similarly but different, how came a tian and a ratatouille aren’t the same?
..
Who said all good things must end?
 
Na na na na. Na na na na. Hey hey hey. Goodbye.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Things Numerous but not Sufficiently Voluminous

Michael 4 Comments

I’ve had too many odd thoughts running around in my head and it’s time to get rid of some things that don’t make any sense to keep.

ModernThinkerHave you seen the new Internet food fad, donut chips? The last time I was at the store I purposely sought out day old donuts to try them. What you’re supposed to do is split your leftover donut in half so you have two skinny disks. Then you coat these in sugar and cinnamon and press them in a panini press. Don’t waste your time. Or your donuts. Unless you like flat, scorched, stale donuts.

I’ve seen this a lot in the last few weeks. A vehicle with appropriate handicap placard or plates idling in a handicap marked parking spot with a driver. This confuses me, particularly when I am walking past the vehicle in question after having has to park my handicap marked vehicle 3 rows away. Is this idling driver an able bodied person who dropped off his or her handicapped passenger at the store front and will return to the door to then pick up the passenger? Or is it a handicapped driver who dropped off his or her able bodied passenger and is himself (or herself) not intending on getting out of the vehicle. In either case, does that car have to be in that spot?

PatioSnow

View from my patio early Wednesday morning

Should it be normal that I didn’t think anything odd that almost 9 inches of snow fell here on the first full day of spring?

Baseball, the game of the boys of summer, starts its season March 29. Hockey and the boys of winter start the Stanley Cup playoffs on April 11. I wonder if this is why baseball style caps are the biggest hockey fashion accessory after replica sweaters.

There is a difference between being chronically ill and being disabled. Yes, a person can be both one leading to the other, and can be both neither affecting the other, and one can be either and not the other. The struggles are real for any of the above.

Am I the only person who still uses the 3 part recipe – eggs fat, and heat – for scrambled eggs and adds a splash of half and half in my morning meal mix?

QuestionIt’s been eleven days since we changed our clocks to Daylight Saving Time and I still have one clock that hasn’t’ been advanced yet. If people want an extra hour of daylight in the summer why don’t they just get up an hour earlier?

Why are there braille markings on drive up ATMs?

How many spiders are living with me that I can wipe out all the cobwebs in the corners on Monday and they’re all back Tuesday morning? And should I be worried about that?

Thank you for listening. I feel much lighter now.

 

The Not Quite So Bad Smelling Pot

Michael Leave a comment

My last post was the bad side of a potpourri of encounters at the local retailers. This post is the better smelling side of that pot. It’s still a bit rotten but it has a less pungent odor about it.

On top of this list of things that don’t smell quite right (or if you prefer, things that make you go hmm) are shopping carts. Shopping carts themselves are not new fodder for the RRSB. Type “shopping cart” into my search bar and you can relive tales of shoppers with carts, carts without shoppers, crazy people with carts and crazy carts out to maim me. (My personal favorite that one. Relive it specifically at “Handicap Hate Crime,” (June 19, 2014)). But what put shopping carts on this particular list is that they officially are now everywhere, and some of it is intentional.

An intentional, yet questionable placement of shopping carts is now at the greeting card store. I’m ambivalent about greeting cards. I like them well enough. I like the idea of sending and getting real mail even if some far afield professional has written the sentiment. They fill a void that mere mortals like me could not and I for one feel accomplished just putting my name after somebody else’s perfectly chosen words. But I’m not so enamored with greeting cards that I feel the need to greet every occasion with a professional acknowledgement. Apparently the greeting card store people feel differently. So differently that they believe so many people will be buying so many of their cards in a single transaction that they have taken the step to make one’s shopping experience less physically exhausting and are now providing shopping cards in which to haul about your selection of selections as you go about selecting their cards. It is clearly just another overstated case of exaggerated hyperbole. Indubitably.

On the other hand, at stores where shopping with carts is advisable and often indeed a necessity, we are now faced with a decision as we pass through the doors that open automatically (and just in case you were unsure of that they are clearly so labeled but that’s a post for a different day). Of course I am talking about our basic supermarkets. At my closest go-to store the vestibule has 6 differently sized wheeled carts (one motorized) and two carry basket variants. For some reason the sporty compact models seem to be the most popular and never about when I need to pick up a dozen or so articles. Thus I am forced to wobble about poorly balanced (as if I wasn’t to be begin with) with a too small basket held in the crook of my arm or to reach deep into the void at the checkout line as I rummage for those 12 items in the bottom of the cart sized suitably to carry a month’s worth of groceries for a family of 4 (plus 2 pets). Where are all the cute little carts? They are being wheeled about by the family of four (pets safely locked in the over-sized SUV idling at the end of parking row 3) sagging under the weight of the soon to be purchased vittles and the pair of matching mini-monsters (aka 3 year olds who prefer to be at home in bed). It is clearly a case of bad choices. Several.

The last petal in our pot comes at the consideration of the local home improvement store. Today my needs that can be satisfied at a lumber, hardware, plumbing, electrical, lighting, appliance, paint, paper, carpet, and appliance store and nursery (the plant version, not the refuge for 3 year olds taking a break from mom and dad) can be met at that very nursery (the plant version). My biggest takeaways from the lawn and garden department begin at the garden half and end on my patio in the forms of plants, pots, and potting soil. Plants or seeds that will someday grow up to be young strapping plants and pots with a simple stand for the pots after the plants have been therein potted are light enough that a supermarket style shopping cart handles them with ease. But then there is that bag of potting soil. First I shouldn’t be lifting anything heavier than a five pound bag of donut holes and second I don’t want to be lifting anything heavier than a five pound bag of donut wholes. A flat bed cart that I can drag the bag of soil onto from the stack o’ bags would be ideal. But no, even though there is an entire store of wood, concrete, and refrigerator-freezers that have their own special carts, in the garden center you have only the extra-large version of the supermarket shopping cart that just ate my twelve items (no waiting) in the preceding paragraph.  It is clearly a choice of too many choices inside and not enough outside. By design.

At here you have it, today’s mélange just this side of rotten.

That’s what I think. Really. How ‘bout you?

 

The Rotten Pot

Michael Leave a comment

The potpourri – a quite lovely arrangement of highly scented dried flowers used to decorate and perfume.  Or collection of songs or poems, or a mélange of thoughts, ideas, or fact.  Whatever you want to make of it, or make it from, it is a beautiful order of otherwise unrelated things. In fact, I have often used it in post titles when I have too little of any one thing rummaging around in my head to add up to a couple hundred words of lucid thinking thus keeping that post from getting too ugly. Until now.

Now we have the not so flattering side of the potpourri – it’s otherwise disagreeable origin. From seventeenth century French it is literally the “rotten pot.” And today is a collection of the rotten side of reality that stuck its ugly face in my path this week.

The major ingredient in this pot is “some people’s children.” Not once, not twice, but three times just since Sunday did I get to witness not one, not two, but three little monsters disturbing the peace and leaving it in pieces.

There was the 3 or 4 year old girl (or boy, at that age does it matter) who made her own potpourri while seated in a shopping cart and systematically pulled petal after petal from the bouquet of flowers I suppose that her mother left with her to keep her (the child) occupied while she (the mother) gave her order to the deli counter clerk (and who couldn’t contain herself (the clerk) and pointed out the impromptu de-blooming). And then there was the 6 or 7 year old girl who at the local party store walked through a full aisle of piñata, punching one after the other until she got bored with that, realized that mom was not within arm’s reach, and wailed at the approximate pitch and volume of an ambulance siren.

But the killer (could we wish) was the around six-ish boy (I think) who stood (yes stood!) on the conveyor belt at the supermarket checkout line while he (I think) systematically threw every item in the impulse rack above the belt onto the belt to his (hers?) mother’s chorus of “Please get back in the cart, get in the cart, get back in the cart, I’m telling you get back in the cart, this is the last time now get back in the cart, get in the cart, get in the cart.” When the cashier had the nerve to say “It’s all right,” I couldn’t just stand there idly at the next check-out line. I said “No, it’s not alright. It’s rude and disgusting. And it’s why I’m in this line because I’m certainly not putting my food on that belt and if I were you (now directed to the cashier) I’d have someone get over there and clean that up.” And I actually felt good about myself having said something until the mother said, “Like that belt was any too clean before.”

And that was my mélange of otherwise unrelated urges to kill.

That’s what I think. Really. How ‘bout you?