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They tell me today is Bilbo Baggins's birthday, but, so far, I haven't seen any mention of it in the papers.
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I used to love playing with rollie pollies when I was a kid...and furry caterpillars and lizards and frogs and...
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This joke in a movie ad has been bothering me for the week or so the ad's been running. The movie is called "The Informant!"---yes, the title has an exclamation point---and the joke goes something like this:
The guy identifies himself as Agent Oh-Fourteen...when asked, he says it's because he's twice as smart as Oh-Oh-Seven.
Funny? Well, I thought so---more than forty years ago when I heard it in an episode of "Gilligan's Island."
Sometimes these promos for movies are loaded up with all the best bits in the movie---and how many of us have gone to a movie only to find out that was true?---and, if the best bit this movie can come up with is a stolen joke from a forty-plus-year-old episode of "Gilligan's Island," well, how funny can the rest of the movie be?
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genevive42, did you ever drop ants into an ant lion cone? We usually have a few of those in our back yard.
(I'm told that some people call ant lions "doodle-bugs" and like to stir the sand around the top to get the doodle-bug to throw sand up from the center, thinking an ant is available.)
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I used to love to create streams and waterways and waterfalls as I'd water the strip gardens along the sides of our down-sloping back yard when I was a kid. My dad wasn't too happy with my digging in the garden, though.
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When I was about eight, I tried to dig a hole down to the center of the Earth. I got about 3 1/2 feet before I was discovered by my mother. My plan was foiled.
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Everyone keeps telling me that I'm digging my own grave, but I swear I haven't picked up a shovel in years.
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philo, I did the exact same thing. Except my goal was much more ambitious, I was going to China!
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One evening last week we looked out the window and saw a praying mantis on the porch screen. I went out to get a closer look, but it was dead. When I went to pick it up, its abdomen pulsated, and then I realized it was full of maggots! It was a CSI moment, one of those scenes I hide my eyes for. I couldn't finish my dinner.
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Ant lion cones and doodle bugs are foreign to me. I grew up in a suburb of Los Angeles and had a mostly cement back yard. We had a small garden and that was about it. And behind the baseball fields there was a little swamp area. I came to like the dragonflies that were there alot.
Once, my cat brought a dragonfly into the house and the body was, I kid you not, nine inches long. It got away from her and I performed a catch and release maneuver with a wicker basket.
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Wow, Kathleen, wouldn't that be a really long day. I think I'd go to Australia one day and Alaska perhaps on a different day. But I get really fussy if I don't get enough sleep.
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The farthest west I've ever been is Laramie, Wyoming, and that was over thirty years ago.
I don't plan any travel outside the borders of the United States. Travel arrangements seem more complicated than ever, and, besides, to get there I'd have to fly
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and, since I posted before I typed this, I'll continue here...and I didn't want to subject myself to what went on in airports and planes before current regulations.
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I'd like to spend a few days in each place, so they'd have to be different trips.
I've never been to Ireland, but I got very close when I visited the Isle of Man. I'd like to return to the Isle of Man as well as visit Ireland on some trip, too, some day (or set of days).
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Just got back from Sydney, Australia yesterday. Or, New South Wales as it says on all the postal stuff. Nice place, and worth a visit if you can get there. Posts: 840 | Registered: Aug 2008
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I had the idea that, somewhere, somehow, somebody was having the exact same thought at the same time as me. I tried to call this person, but the line was busy.
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I've noticed that I am the only one to have made anykind of post on hatrack for quite awhile. Could it be that I am the only one left? Could it be that I now rule Hatrack??
Ha, Ha! Bow before He Who Must Be Obeyed! I will use my power to fight evil (or good, whichever is easiest), promote all that is right, and edit extrinsics posts to make him look not so smart.
Now all I need are some minions...
[This message has been edited by snapper (edited September 27, 2009).]
[This message has been edited by snapper (edited September 27, 2009).]
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What, no sympathy for my deeply disturbing bug experience?
Snapper, some might argue it does't count if you didn't stop anywhere in the state except a roadside restaurant or gas station. So what's your real count?
quote:Snapper, some might argue it does't count if you didn't stop anywhere in the state except a roadside restaurant or gas station. So what's your real count?
I would agree that you shouldn't be able to count a place if all you did was land in an airport there and then take off for another airport.
But driving through a state for several miles, even if you don't stop for gas or at a roadside restaurant, should count for that state.
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There's some video floating around these past few days---I don't have a link---of the Pope giving a speech while being crawled on by an Itsy Bitsy Spider...
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I concede. 49 states it is. (After all, it is pretty cool. Why should I try to take away snapper's record? Spoil sport!)
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I have stopped, set foot, and conducted business (or sight seen) in all 49 states. In fact I have spent at least 24 hours in each one. Great nation we have here.
Let me consult the map and see what is teh largest metropolitian place I have never been to yet (not including Alaskan cities). Either Great Falls, MT or Rapid City, SD. Other places I have yet to see or drive by...
Yellowstone Key West Plymouth Rock (or anywhere inside the cape) Grand Canyon
I have also been to 4 Canadian Provinces, all four corners of the lower 48 (Homestead FL, Caribou ME, Blaine WA, and Chilua Vista CA.)
The farthest north - Thompson Manitoba (450 miles north of Winnepeg) note: it was in March
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I'm studying abroad in Ireland this spring!
And I have great sympathy for your bug experience, MrsBrown. It reminds me of a nature show I watched once that described this bug disease (a fungus, I think). The fungus paralyzed the bug and then grew spores out of its body. The show kept showing all of these ants and caterpillars with hundreds of little spores growing out of them in all directions, set to very dramatic music. Those were some very disturbing images. I still shudder when I think about it.
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Just the other day I had a cockroach crawl out of my hair. A moment of surprise...a bit of shaking it off my glasses where it wound up...a couple of on-and-off hours of running my fingers through my hair wondering if there were any more...some extra hair washing when I got home...but no long-term trauma, I'd say. (How the damned thing got there, I still don't know.)
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About the size of a fingernail and nearly the same shape...might've been a potato bug, not a cockroach, but I use the term generically for any gross brown bug crawling around, be it cockroach or cricket or potato bug, as opposed to silverfish or mosquito...
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Cockroaches have a certain connotation that I don't associate with most other insects. Many years ago I saw a rather large insect scurry across a floor down in Florida. I was informed that this beast was a cockroach. It was black, and it had to be an inch-and-a-half long!
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I was in Ghana and shared a hotel room for a night with a 3x2" cockroach. It was smart. It only showed itself when I didn't have any shoes on. Of course, short of wearing iron boots I don't know if I would've wanted to take it on anyway.
I decided that if it stayed on its side of the room, I would stay on my side of the room and we would both survive the night.
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Back on the Beatle Box we were talking about a couple of weeks ago...this morning, I finally got through the last of the CDs and have listened to it all. Took awhile, in between everything else going on.
I think I will buy the mono Box, assuming I ever turn up one.
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Thanks for the bug stories I'd have been traumitized by some of your experiences. My next-door neighbor swallowed a June-bug (beetle) in her coffee; she almost threw up. I could tell more--my childhood is rife with disturbing bug-related incidents. But I'm ready to move on.
Snapper, you must have so much in the pot for stirring up stories--do you draw inspiration from your travels?
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Marita Ann, that's so cool! Will you be in the city or country? When I think of Ireland, all that comes to mind is quaint little villages with goat carts, sheep, and men in kilts. And crumbling castles on deserted heaths.
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I almost swallowed a wasp once. It climbed into my can of coke and when I took a sip I felt something crawling around on my lips. Luckily I spit it out before getting stung.
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Does getting stung by a bee really help keep you from developing rheumatoid arthritis later in life?
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quote:Snapper, you must have so much in the pot for stirring up stories--do you draw inspiration from your travels?
One time while driving through the California desert did I get inspired. Came up with a cool hard sci-fi idea. i wrote it, posted it (in another crit site) and sent it to everyone I know. Never had so much negative feedback in my life.
The long drives will help me form ideas and lets me work through some scenes that are stuck in my head. teh problem is. like dreams, the ideas kind of disapate if you don't get them down.
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I don't know why, but this event has caused me great shame and regret even to this day. After spitting the poor bee out of my mouth, I stomped on it. I don't know why; it was just my first instinct. It wasn't the first insect I'd ever killed by any means, but I instantly felt unjustified due to the fact that it never stung me. Posts: 2003 | Registered: Jul 2008
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I once pulled up at a petrol station in a little town in outback Australia. It was midnight and it was the sort of place that serviced long-haul road trains. I had my wife and all the kids asleep in the car.
A big 4wd ute with spots and bullbars pulled up next to me while I was filling up. The tray was full of dead kangaroos. They were shooters, they were drunk and they were swearing and laughing at the top of their lungs. They woke up my kids who were clearly alarmed by the racket and the comments.
So I asked them ( there were three or four) if they would mind quieting down as I had sleeping kids in the car and we had come a long way and had a long way to go.
To my surprise they shut-up.
I paid for the petrol and left and the children settled back to sleep. It wasn't long before I noticed the ute behind me with its lights off. I sped up to put some distance between us and in response they whacked on their spotlights and chased me for a hundred kilometres.
They would speed up and draw right up behind me for a moment and then fall back only to do it again, and again.
We passed no lights, no houses, no other cars for a hundred kilometres. Just them, and me trying to keep my family from waking.
As we approached the lights of a big coal mine, they gave up and turned around. I can't imagine where they were going. Back I guess.
I have often thought about that experience as a sequence in a story. What if my car had broken down, a flat tyre, what if, what if... all grist for the mill.
[This message has been edited by Andrew_McGown (edited October 02, 2009).]
quote:...the ideas kind of disapate if you don't get them down
Good reason for having some kind of audio digital recorder along--just speak the ideas into it. I understand ipods and other mp3 players have that capability.
Andrew, I think it would be cool to visit Australia, but since I don't do the boot camps, I wouldn't get to be the one to go do them. OSC may be interested, though. You can ask if he ever plans to do a boot camp down under (or any other questions you may have) on this page.
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I'd have been traumitized by some of your experiences. My next-door neighbor swallowed a June-bug (beetle) in her coffee; she almost threw up. I could tell more--my childhood is rife with disturbing bug-related incidents. But I'm ready to move on.
