Aping the Chimp

Have you heard about these monkeys terrorizing Japan? They’re breaking into people’s homes and stuff. Nobody knows where they came from. But c’mon. Monkeys don’t just show up out of nowhere.  (OK, yeah, they do in those Planet of the Apes movies. I’m not worried about it that much, but I suppose this could be the start of some type of ape uprising like in those movies.) No. I'm guessing these chimps escaped from a zoo. Maybe they tunneled out. Now, that would be a great movie. Apes tunneling out of zoo. I don’t think that movie’s been made yet…

I think the typical ape in the zoo is angry and I think I know why. It’s ‘cause there’s always that one guy standing too long outside their cage scratching his armpit yelling like an ape. And it’s too bad, ‘cause you  can’t ask him to stop, ‘cause that might be how he is in real life. Gotta be tactful…  

 

Pulp Non-fiction

With prices going up up up on just about everything (except gas now) I thought it might lift some of our spirits to remind ourselves of some of the free things that we have in this country:

·         Pulp – yeah, you gotta pay for the OJ but the pulped version is the same price as the runny stuff.

·         Deli counter samples – “Can I please have one more taste of the chicken salad?”

·         Onions on burgers and dogs - You gotta pay for onions on a pizza. Wait. What?

·         Raisins in English muffins or (I think) bagels – Free, baby!

·         Ice cream parlor samples – This can be tricky if done through a drive-through window. I know.

·         Uncle Tommy’s Select Thoughts – Still free!

Editor's note: None of the above recommended products advertise on our site.

 

Berry Good

I love berries. On our recent vacation we came across some new varieties of berries. Yeah.  

•          The marionberry is a variant of the blackberry and was invented in 1956. We saw these for sale at a farmer’s market. This berry is named after a county in Oregon; it is not named after the former Washington DC mayor Marion Barry. Nor was Mayor Barry named after the berry. We do not know if Marion Barry was fond of marionberries but we know that if he did try them he surely liked them!
•          The loganberry is another west coast blackberry variant invented by a Mr. Logan in 1881. We saw these offered as a milk shake ingredient. Yum!
•          Elderberries – These have been around a while (they couldn’t be new with THAT name). We saw these offered as a variety of syrup for pancakes (or griddle cakes as they’re known in some regions).

We’re guessing the elderberry syrup stains since the pancake house shared a building with a tattoo parlor.  (“Yeah, can you turn this stain on my arm into something artistic?”)

 

Bed Post

We’re trying to book hotel reservations for next weekend. Lots of people are traveling and this seems to be more challenging than normal. I’ve always had a hard time with this type of thing. When you call these 800 numbers you never know what you’re going to get. The booking agents don’t always get it right:

•          One time we thought we had a room with two queens and they put us in New York City
•          One time we booked a room with a king and ended up with a room over MLK weekend
•          One time we booked a room with twins and ended up in St Paul
•          One time we thought we had a waterbed and ended up in one of those floating casinos

If we’d booked a room with bunk beds I bet we would have ended up with a prison cell. Do they still have bunk beds in the joint or was that just in the old movies?

Did anybody invent bunk waterbeds yet?

 

Coffee Break

I’m tired of being told I can do something “for the price of a cup of coffee”.  We hear this from the charities people all the time, don’t we? And from budget people (“For the price of one trip to Starbucks…”). It’s a wonder the coffee industry survives. Can we give coffee a “break”, at least for a while? There are plenty of other habits we can spend less of our paycheck on: cigarettes, marijuana, chew, Burger Kings, lottery tickets, hard liquor, beer, soda, National Enquirer, circus peanuts…. If we’re going to do something good with the money, let’s eliminate something not good.

No, that wasn’t my grocery list! (Sometimes less is more when it comes to feedback from my readers).

 

Hello Bobby

Our 8 month old granddaughter (and her parents) was with us for the past two weeks. She was great! We’ve been told she is saying “Baba” a lot since she left. I’m not sure what to make of that, but I’m guessing she misses me. And she apparently (grandparently?) thinks my name is Bob.

I’ve heard recently from the girl’s parents that the words “Mom” and “Dad” derive from babies saying “Mama” and “Dada”. I had not known that. Since then I’ve thought of other words that must derive from babies’ first utterings:

• Papa – This may be a result of the child watching too many pizza commercials
• Pippi – This may mean “wet diaper” unless you’ve been reading Pippi Longstocking to the child
• Moo Goo Gai Pan – This is what you get when you let the baby order takeout
• Couscous – I read somewhere that it’s never too soon to introduce your child to foreign grains