Black and White Issue

 

We went to the zoo recently. It caused me to hearken back to when I was little and we didn’t have a color television.  You’d watch animal shows like Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom or a Saturday morning Tarzan movie in black and white and imagine what the animals looked like in color. Orange lions. Green frogs. Pink panthers. Eventually we all got color TV’s. What a disappointment when we saw the zebras; they were still black and white.

So yeah, it’s my theory that the zebra was far more popular with animal lovers prior to the advent of color TV’s. People have lost interest in them. Disney’s never made a movie about a zebra. And that song about a horse in striped pajamas? Nope. You never hear it anymore. There’s no zebra book. And sometimes football referees are called zebras and nobody likes those guys.

I bet the zebras are the “throw ins” on zoo trades. “You want the panda? Okay, you can have him but you’re gonna have to take 4 zebras off my hands.”

Marco. Polo.

Remember Marco Polo? No, not the guy who discovered Asia, or whatever he did. (Didn’t he invent the shirt?) No, I’m talking about the game of Marco Polo, the game of tag played in the pool where one kid had to close his eyes and try to tag the other kids. Oh, it was a blast – not! I don’t know anyone who has good memories of Marco Polo. I mean, have you ever heard a conversation start up with the words, “Hey Bruce, remember that time we played Marco Polo in Roy’s pool?” No, you’ve not heard that. Having said all that, it was probably the best game named after an explorer…   

Amazingly, Marco Polo traveled to the continent of Asia without taking a ship. Wait. What? Oh yeah, that’s because there’s no body of water between Europe and Asia. Yet they’re separate continents somehow. Really? C’mon. It’s been long enough. It’s time to take down the barriers between east and west. We’ve been blind – like that kid in the pool. It’s time we open our eyes and realize that we’re not going to unite the east and west until we get rid of the 2 continent thing. Call it Eurasia. Asiope? I don’t care. Let’s do it.   

Date Madness

I got invited to an Oktoberfest Celebration next week. It sounds like fun, but it’s a bit confusing seeing as how next week is still September. Good luck explaining that to your spouse. “Of course I know it’s still September next week Marge, but they’re calling it an Oktoberfest.” What’s wrong with calling it Septemberfest?

Last winter I got invited to a March Madness basketball gathering in, you guessed it, February. (I would have called it February Madness.) Is no tradition sacred?

OK. Let’s just move all the holidays. We’ll move the Fourth of July to June but still call it the fourth of July. We’ll move June Teenth to May. We’ll move May Day to April 1^st but still call it May Day. And April Fool’s Day to March 1^st (but no one would really know if the day moved or if it was a trick). And on and on. People will say “Well, Easter moves around.” And, “The Canadians moved Thanksgiving.” That’s lame.

And then people will start just moving their birthdays around. Yeah. You know it’s coming...

Falling Down

Remember the song “Ring Around the Rosie” we sang as kids? We’d all join hands and walk in a circle, and fall down. That song of course stems back to the plague of the 1300’s. I think we all know that connection now, but it might have been nice for someone to tell us about that when we were little…

The other song like that was “London Bridge is Falling Down” which dates back to the 11^th century when Viking Olaf II invaded the British Isles. Fun songs, huh? These two could be grouped together for a peppy marching band halftime show. The band would fall down at the end of each number.

Well, there’s a third song we can add to the mix. “Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes” is, I think, about Foot and Mouth Disease. I mean, it’s gotta be, right? Hey, I’m pretty busy running this blog and I don’t have time to research that, but if somebody could check it out, it’d be much appreciated.

On a related note, I’m not aware of any songs celebrating Foot in Mouth Disease.

Pump it Up!

 We rented a U-Haul truck to transport some furniture on our recent trip. We stopped at a Loves travel center for fuel.  With that size of truck you don’t have much flexibility at the fuel pump and you pretty much have to wait for the guy in front of you to finish ‘cause you really don’t want to have to back up. There are two groups of people you need to look out for when you pull up to the pumps in a truck:

·         The 38 gallon guy. I got stuck behind one of these guys filling up his Suburban. It was my fault, I should have known Suburbans have big tanks. But the guy kinda needed to acknowledge me as I waited for him, a nod or a shrug to acknowledge “yeah, I’m gonna be doin’ 38 gallons here”. No apology needed here, just acknowledgement.

·         The potty park at the pump (PPP) guy. This guy gets his gas and leaves his car AT THE PUMP while he goes inside the travel plaza. I am open to signage and or penalties to address these PPP people.

We will attempt to put a positive spin on this (which is what we do here at UT). If the PPP guy runs into the plaza while his car is still filling, it is acceptable to stretch the hose in his car over to yours and fill up your vehicle.

You get free gas and the PPP learns acceptable behavior. Kind of a win-win, maybe?

Give me a Breakfast

 

We just got back from a trip. The good financial news is that gas was cheap. We saw gas (and bought it) as low as $2.64 a gallon. The bad news? I’ve always loved the hotels with the free hot breakfasts. Anything you get there is a bonus, 'cause it's free. You get your eggs, sausage, bacon, toast, yogurt, fruit, hot cereal, cold cereal, coffee, juice, sweet rolls. That’s a fourteen item breakfast, and I may be missing something! So, how can this be bad news, you ask?

Well, I found out that, yeah, it’s a free breakfast all right. But what they don’t tell you is that you have to actually stay at that hotel in order to get the free breakfast. No, they don’t put that on the billboard along the highway.

I guess this is why they don’t have a drive up window at the hotel for the free breakfast.