Do you ever root for the bad guy

The cat chased the mouse on Tom and Jerry. The cat was the bad guy and always lost and was banged up as a result. One time my older brother turned to me and said, I'd like the cat to win one time. My seven year old self nodded in agreement.





I guess this is why we like anti-heros like Tony Soprano and the Breaking Bad dude.

What brought this to mind is news of a middle aged, overweight woman who comes from a good, long established family with a husband and sons working as firemen or sheriff deputies being investigated for missing funds. She may be innocent. I hope it is just a mistake in the system. The news is ominous in that the Georgia Bureau of Investigation is doing the inquiry.

Now one theft I did not feel sorry for the thief was a couple that were draining an elderly man's bank accounts. They bought ridiculous things like ski jets and other luxury items. Blowing the money away like it was nothing. Have you ever noticed the wastefulness of some people with money they steal?

I guess if someone is hurt and affected, you feel angry at the criminal. But if it is a corporation or government entity, you feel enough distance to feel some sympathy for the perpetrator at times. And why should I feel that way. It is not like they are stealing to save a child's life or help anyone else. It is usually just plain ole materialistic greed.

Anyway, I have had a rusty cough for the past two weeks. It started with a cold but it is just my old allergies jumping at the opportunity to rear it's head. Next year, we may pile into the minivan and go to Arizona during February and March.  Meanwhile I've written the following ditty. I've been following a blog called It's Rhyme Time. After reading I tend to think in rhymes.




I have the crud is all I can say
I've snorted, hacked coughed away
Pear trees are a bloom
I can only fume

With pollen all day
My cough wont go away
Will this be my doom
Sitting in my tomb

School kids will pay
Calling me out to play
When they sing out my name
I'll make some coughing fame

On an evening with a full moon
I'll make a big boom
They'll be singing my tune
Croaking like a loon

I'll feel better soon
And sit on a ocean dune
Have a hop and skip on a sunny day
My cough finally at bay

Teaching your grandmother to suck eggs

Your mama  is not the same thing.

Teaching your grandmother to suck eggs is a phrase of antiquity dating further back than the 1700s.

It refers to the practice of eating raw eggs which was common at one time. I remember people eating raw eggs when I was young. Being from the South, we cook everything well done. Considering the heat we have, I imagine the practice is a protection from food poisoning.

Anyway, it means for a novice to instruct someone much more learned. I like the variation of the gosling showing the goose the pasture.

Teaching to the choir is another variant but it really refers to lecturing someone already in agreement.

Repeatedly, I came across the exact phrase in the paragraph below but did not get the original source but I am pretty sure it originally came from Hog on Ice by Charles Earl Funke (Harper & Row, New York, 1948).  I found the book on Amazon.

"One of the earliest of these is given in Udall’s translation of ‘Apophthegmes (1542) from the works of Erasmus. It reads: ‘A swyne to teach Minerua, was a prouerbe, for which we sai: Englyshe to teach our dame to spyne.’” That last bit was about an expression, don’t try to teach a dame to spin."

Now for Americans, "go suck an egg" means get lost and we know how we disdain an egg sucking dog. My aunt throw extra eggs from her henhouse on a tree stump for her dogs to eat. Times have changed.

I follow a folktales listserve out of England and some Americans were insulted by an email titled, "Go tell your grandmother to suck eggs." I can understand how it was misunderstood. But folks interested in folktales know things can mean different things at different times in history.

I didn't comment or apologize. But I know some Americans who told some Brits to tell their grandmothers to suck an egg.

What phrases have you heard of that means the same as a "gosling showing the goose the pasture".

Amazing wildlife rescue

A wolf was found holding on to life in a frozen river. Amazing is how the wolf interacted with the Italian wildlife rehabilitators, Monte Adonte. http://www.centrotutelafauna.org/ You can follow the film's message easily without understanding the Italian subtitles.



One day as I was leaving work, I saw a hawk in the center of the road. It looked dead but I pulled over on the state highway. I had a cardboard box in my trunk and a sheet. Odd combination but I had used them at school that day.

I watched a huge semi drive a wide distance from the animal. Cars did the same. Luckily a man saw me and pulled over. He helped me get the hawk.

Assuming it was injured, I took it to a wildlife center. They examined it and it appeared  OK and the rehabilitator just tossed the bird in the air and it took flight.

I'm not saying that a wild animal will not hurt you. Please don't think you can handle a rattlesnake. But that hawk was so calm. I've since saved a few more from the road. One early morning, I found a hawk in the road at 4 am. I woke a sleepy baby but moved it safely off the road. I guess the nestling fell from the tree that night.

Why I like my dogs.

At this moment in time, my 65 pound pitbull Louise is trying to get the 25 pound terrier mix Muffin to move over so she can sit in the chair with her. With an ironwill and stubbornness, Muffin is not moving. So Louise sits on her head. It works every time. If you can't talk folks into doing something, make it uncomfortable until they do.

Louise would have made a good mother. My lone male dog, the bodacious BoDuke checks regular. Thank God Louise is fixed. She would have a litter of about 20 to 30 pitbull, chihuahua mixes with a dash of Jack Russell terriers.

I could corner the market on temperamental, barking, dangerous dogs. I can see the gangbangers coming to my door, "Excuse me ma'am, you got some of them dogs of yours. I need some protection from my homies."

My dad would tell us children that he took two alligators disguised as bulldogs to go fetch my mother in Alabama to marry him. Now that I own a bulldog, the alligators would have been more vicious disguised as weiner dogs.

Now what leads me to such a deep topic today, the news and editorials du jour. Today it is the merits of legalizing marijuana in Colorado. Great Jehosephat, the world is nuttin but a bunch of yin-yang turmoil.

Pot should be legalized. High profit illegal drugs should be regulated and dispensed to addicts, these are crimes that fuel a violent drug trade that have a high untaxed profit margin. This is my opinion.

I do not like pot smoking.

Marijuana is believed to induce schizophrenia in people who have a genetic weakness for the disease. What, you don't have schizophrenia in your family. Schizophrenia is like Lou Gehrig's disease. There are many who are first time genetic mutations that develop the disease. It can also be induced by a brain injury.

The upside, cannabis may allow researchers to explore the cause and treatment of schizophrenia. Meanwhile, if you want to know hell on Earth, be responsible for the care of your schizophrenic relative. You know why so many live under bridges.

The other reason I don't like pot smoking is that dulling your senses to the environment is not really living. It is like sleeping your life away.

Pot smoking on the developing nervous system is not good either. I can't even entertain the consequences of children smoking pot even though it happens with pot being illegal.

Meanwhile, I have four large deer who live in my front pasture. A young deer was killed probably by a coyote close to the road about two weeks ago. We watched all matter of animals eating the remains. It would be gross but the contentment of a lone opossum eating one evening was a beautiful thing. And I hate possums and rotting carcasses. I was careful to not let the dogs know about it. You think dog hair in the house is bad.

The carcass is nothing but a memory. I saw where a coyote brought bones to gnaw closer to my house than I like. This morning walking up my driveway,I saw the Cooper's hawk, that winters here, working the front pasture.

I've got to set up some field cameras. Meanwhile, muffin is back in the chair. Louise is drinking my coffee. I set the cup on the floor between my chair and the dog cage. Loretta had realized she couldn't lay in the cage and lap coffee. But Louise must have realized, Loretta can't stop her from drinking. It is no ordinary coffee. It is a 20 ounce cup.

Louise is the sneakiest coffee thief that ever lived. I should smack the hell out of her. But I'm not drinking the coffee after she has had some. I'm thinking of building a small but tall chair side table that holds a lamp. At the base of the lamp, there is a door to a compartment that will hold my coffee cup.

I can see Louise pulling the door open and drinking my coffee if I get up and do anything..

I like that old time rock and roll

Someday Never Comes by Creedence Clearwater Revival haunts me. The song means something entirely different to me. Like many songs, it is an emotion and a particular lyric that attaches meaning.

John Fogerty wrote the song about what his father said after his parent's divorce. The words came back to him when he left his five year old son.
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 When I have exercised on a treadmill or elliptical, I have always enjoyed another CCR tune which really almost a Vietnam War Anthem. But John Fogerty wrote in response to gun control, twenty years before people thought it was an issue. It just has a good beat to make you move a little faster.






 One of my other big exercise numbers follows. What songs do you love for meanings other than what it is written for?

For real

" I know nobody will read this but sometimes, when I'm bored, I get wrapped up in a sleeping bag and lather butter all over myself and slide around the kitchen floor pretending I'm a slug."

No it is not original but I wish I had made it up. I was tagged in a chain Facebook post to post this on my timeline. I don't do chains, so no one who commented had any consequences on my post. I don't believe in chains whether they are good or bad. I posted it because it was funny.

My favorite Facebook post has obviously been taken down. One of my Facebook friends, whose name I remember from elementary school - hey we all get to reconnect, posts a lot of conspiracy theories. This one I should have taken a screenshot. It claims the government controls the weather. Then she has this friend that chimes in how Hurricane Katrina was the result of them playing with the weather.

These paranoid news bits are hysterical. Of course she is very serious. I wondered about her sanity. I think it is mostly what my dad called the honeycomb theory of the brain. You fill it with crap, that is all you can think. Why so many people succumb is right out of a grade B horror film.

Crazy week at my home. We have all been sick. Mom is in the hospital. Her sodium levels in her blood were too low. Whenever my mom gets sick again, she is going to the doctor the first day. This has really been an uneasy scare. Last night after I left, the kidney doctor came in. He explained a lot to her but she was not wearing her hearing aides. So I am in the dark.

Mom wanted to go to the doctor but did not want to go to the hospital. We all love that magic pill that does not exist.

Anyway, tonight I will crawl under the covers and sleep like a log.

Got me a Smart TV

I got a new smart television and have learned the difference between an analog signal and a digital signal. I get so tired of learning but I do love electronics. My favorite store is the Best Buys in Warner Robins. They will discuss everything there.

I plan to cash out a variation of 401K that teachers can purchase. There is not that much money in the account in addition to how it would be paid back to me is not that attractive. I looked up the tax rate that it would be taxed at and I learned whether I took it out in increments or one big lump; the tax rate was the same.

That gets me to thinking about the electronics I want. The list can get quite large. But I have promised myself to keep some in savings for an emergency. Having my mom live with me, I know it is expensive to be a senior citizen.

We have been sick at the house this past week. It is a version of the crud. Lower respiratory and sore throats. My mother has suffered the most. We have gotten her book of exercises out to build up her muscle strength. She is eating very lightly. Some to get weight off, some to keep her stomach shrunk, some her appetite has decreased. It is the weakness that concerns me.

I'm waiting for the quarterly payment of interest in March to withdraw the funds. I plan to buy a new minivan type vehicle, a new roof, remodel the bathrooms to be more handicap assessable, treat the house for termites. There will not be that much left afterwards.

When I started saving the money, I never thought I would need to use it in my lifetime. My dad did not like the account. He felt they would go broke and I would never see my money. Well AIG did go broke and had to borrow like crazy from the government.

My money was protected in that it was guaranteed at a lower interest rate from the stock market accounts. Many with the stock market accounts lost a portion if not all of their money. I don't really know. No one has told me but I guess the lower interest rate produced more in the long run. I've got my depression era dad to thank.

My older brother doesn't like my smart television purchase. A third party could listen in. I plan to deactivate the voice recognition software to eliminate the problem. Of course my television will be a dumber one as a consequence.

I'm not that afraid of a someone listening. What they would hear would be. "Get your dog ass off that chair." "Who peed on the floor?' "What are you chewing?" Thankfully, my dogs can't answer back. It would be along the lines of "there's chicken in the refrigerator or we can eat chicken frozen" .

The other reason I don't want to fool with the voice recognition is the not unexpected, "Sorry, I did not understand what you said." Now who wants to talk to a television like the electronic dialog with the helpline of any service department for any customer service you deal with.

I can see myself watching SNL I have previously recorded and a song from endless videos that start playing on webpages starts talking. I shut the page down, but it ain't through talking. Then I got a television having to get the last word in.