AFFORDABLE FRIEND

An ex-coworker of mine quit the Postal Service and started his own business about fifteen years ago.   I talked to his mother-in-law about a year ago and she said his business was doing just fine. The name of his business is AFFORDABLE KITCHEN CABINETS. 

Since then I have seen other businesses with the name AFFORABLE in the name, such as AFFORDABLE PLUMBING, AFFORDABLE LANDSCAPING, and AFFORDABLE this and that, I don't remember them all.

Now, I am thinking of starting my own business and why not use AFFORDABLE in the name?  I think I am going to call my business AFFORDABLE FRIEND.

One time when taking a computer course the instructor told me the night before at the Holiday Inn Lounge he got drunk and had as many good friends as money could buy.   I repeat:  "as money could buy".

I think I am friendly enough, in a quiet way, I smile when I speak a lot of the time, what could you ask more from a good sincere friend.   I can talk about a lot of stuff like historical events, family history,  old times "when things were black and white" (as my son said one time when he was young), and heck, even sports.

I know nothing what so ever about sports. I just never got it into my head to give a hoot about organized sports.   But I learned that people hear what they want to hear from you.  One time I walked into a country store in Union County and the owner's son started right off talking about names I never heard of and sporting events I wasn't even sure of what sport.  Then, I heard the name Vince Dooley then it all made sense.  I was wearing a ball cap with the big G in front.  He was talking about the Georgia Bulldogs and football... and what Vince Dooley was going to do about some guy.  I used cliché'  expressions, like, "Vince can see the whole picture and the tiny details that we can't".  He agreed with me, said he never looked at it like that before.  And some of the  players he mentioned I would smile and nod knowingly  and would say something like "there is a lot that most people don't know about that." 

I'm glad he didn't corner and demand more information on my connections with the University of Georgia.  I would have to confess the only connection I had  that my son went there and I was a big fan of the MAD cartoonist Jack Davis who drew excellent UGA DAWG cartoons for the UGA Booster Club.

I have all I need to start my AFFORDABLE FRIEND Business.  The only thing I don't have which might be an asset is glowing white teeth.

Which brings up another point, if I get a facelift and maybe get rid of my pot belly maybe I can be a TROPHY FRIEND which  I'm sure then I can demand more money.... then, if it comes to that I might not can legally use the word AFFORDABLE - Then what? 

Be Careful What You Ask For

(Note- You might wonder how the above picture happened.  Below is a post I made on Facebook which  a fury of comments followed.  Joe Jenkins performed a miracle, with the help of Photo Shop he crowned me Pope.)



I wonder if you have to be Catholic to be the Pope? I bet I wasn't even considered, it doesn't seem fair. If Catholicism isn't a qualification I think the Concave of Cardinals fumbled. Apparently they were looking for a down to earth humble man who lives a simple life and even takes buses to go places. I am their man and the fools don't even know it.... I rode the bus before and also subways... and I think the monorail at Disney World should count too. I also do humble things, like use coupons. 

And, if push comes to shove between me and this St. Francis guy and he brings up that he is Catholic and I'm not I'll hit them with a law suit that you cannot hire people, or not hire people, based on race, creed, sex, color, or religion. White Smoke? Poof! If they say that is not an international law, I will tell them the Lord just whispered in my ear that he changed the international law, in Commandment number 11.

I'm looking for a good lawyer now, I'm going to watch TV and write down some numbers from their commercials, then, watch out!

The History of Groundhog Day

Do you know the history of Groundhog Day, like how it got started and how it developed itself into today’s version?

I did some extensive research on the subject – which means that I read today's page of Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader page-a-day Calendar: In old Europe on February the 2nd they celebrated Candlemas, which is the halfway point between the winter solstice and the spring equinox. The church clergymen lighted candles and la-de-da. Then the Germans altered the tradition to include a hedgehog. If the hedgehog sees its shadow there would be six more weeks of winter. Then many Europeans started migrating to the new world. A lot Germans settled in Pennsylvania. They wanted to continue Hedgehog Day but there were no hedgehogs. They substituted groundhogs. So, there you have it, the development of Groundhog Day.

Now, I don’t know if you are aware of it or not but some of the details have changed again. Now, on February the 2nd, the honorary groundhog must see, not his own shadow, but the above character.

HAPPY 1ST DAY OF THE REST OF YOUR LIFE!

I Still Have It!

We go to a Mah Jongg two hour Mah Jongg session every Tuesday. Most of the players are elderly ladies. I found they believe in going strictly by the rules.

We learned to play Mah Jongg about three months ago and found it to be very relaxing and good for your mind exercise of concentration. You play with little ivory looking tiles that have Asian symbols on them.

At our last session a lady at our table tried to get the attention of a lady at the next table. She called her name a few times but apparently she was so absorbed in the game she didn’t the caller.

I told the lady to hit her in the back of the head with a tile and that will get her attention.

An elderly woman at the table looked up at me, thought for a second or two what I said then busted out giggling. Her face turned red and she giggled so much her body shook.

It felt like old times in high school. I still have it!

Quote I Just Read On Facebook:

Yes, dear lady, I am drunk. And you are homely.

Tomorrow I will be sober but you will still be homely.

I think that was a Winston Churchill quote.

Y? Because We Like you!

Today in History: Feb 8, 1926: Walt Disney Studios is formed

Unprepared

Sorry. Due to car wrecks, doctors visits, and shopping for a car I am totally unprepared.




I once told a teacher I was unprepared and you should have seen the look on her face. Man! I wish I had a camera.

Secret Memo

WikiLeaks Report

The below is a private memo from Edwin T. Hunter, the CEO of Hunter Industries:

There is an infectious germ that is spreading rapidly. The common household name for it is C-Diff. It makes a person very sick in his or her stomach and intestines. It has caused deaths. The most infested places of C-Diff are hospitals.

It is believed that C-diff causes as many as 15,000 deaths a year.
Many people have tried to treat C-diff with expensive anti-biotics but they don’t do the trick.

Dr. Lawrence Brandt, a pioneer in biological research in combating C-Diff discovered that just old fashion human fecal placed in the infected area just about destroys the C-diff infection. It has something to do with C-diff is bad bacterial doing the body harm and the human feces is chocked full of good bacterial that fights the bad bacterial.

Frankly, I think a lot of people would turn down the dose of the special medicine, aka human feces, if they knew it was actual human fecal. They would turn their noses up, literally.

The word “feces” instead of “shit” helps some, but not enough.

Here is where Hunter Enterprises* come into play.

We first find something to disguise the smell. Maybe the final ingredient will be blended strawberries to cover up the real natural smell or maybe mint leaves Follow me?

Maybe we could have the Mint Julep C-Diff medicine, or the Strawberry Fields Forever C-Diff Medicine. What about “Mellow Yellow Banana Flavor C-Diff Medicine?

But first we need an endless supply of you-know-what. We will pay donors good prices for what they can let us use… or “let loose with” we jokingly say. It might be an incentive to pay by the net weight of the raw product.

Or maybe, if they do a good job we would give a bonus; say free meal coupons at all-you-can-eat buffets.

I know from friends and kin that when you mass produce something and put it into a container with a label on it you have to rent a professional kitchen that is guaranteed clean. We need to find a professional kitchen that is very close to a restroom with a good dozen stalls.

Of course we will have special plumbing to harvest the you-know-what.

Also, to meet state and Federal requirements a list of ingredients has to listed on the label as contents. This isn’t as hard as it appears. Remember fecal was not always fecal. It is a final product, processed through the human body. Originally it was wine, beer, potato chips, hotdogs, hamburgers, fried fish, fried chicken, spice, flour, and sugar. All we have to do is get a chemical listing of all those products and list those on the label.

Of course the last step in determining how much to charge for the medicine. Market study shows people have paid up to $2,500 in antibiotics to get rid of C-Diff for medicine that didn’t work. What about $3000 per bottle?

Man! I feel filthy rich already!
*Our motto: “There are endless ways to get rich overnight from the suckers born every minute”

Homemade Christmas Card

What is more heartwarmilng than something homemade? Here is a homemade Christmas card I made many years ago.

Click once or twice to see the details.

Enjoy!

Patting or Petting?

TSA has been in the news lately because of their "hands-on" pat downs. Is this patting or petting?

Check this link out:

CLICK HERE OR TOUCH FIRMLY.

Also, isn't it a shame that we chose these people that provide us with airline security to harp on?

Caught!

Yesterday we went to CVS to buy a certain item that was advertised on sale, limited 3 per customer.

Anna bought 3 and I bought 3. The cashier, with a German accent, could not believe what we were trying to pull off.

She said in so many words we were disobeying the rules. Well, we were each a customer. Limit 3 to a customer - yep! That is exactly what we were doing.

She compared our cash register tickets and said the cards we swiped and more or less said, “Ahah! You have the same swipe-card identification number!” She looked smug. She had us dead to rights. I was wondering if she was going to call 911.

A German accent can sound so strict. It is an accent that you are either right or wrong. It is a “You will respect authority!” kind of accent.

She said she was going to let us go this time. Then, as a topper, she gave us a frosty “HAVE A NICE DAY!” as we left.

I told Anna we should go to Eddie’s Trick Shop that sells stage makeup & masks and buy two false handle-bar mustaches, put them on and go back to CVS and attempt to buy six more of the on-sale item and watch the lady do a hissy-fit.

The Art of Looking Prepared

One of the key reasons people are successful is because they probably have a reputaton of dependabiity. Yessir! If someone has a reputation of being as timely as a clock they are bound to succeed.

Which reminds me, I got bogged down with yard work and forgot to think of a subject for today's blog. So, today the subject is "The Art of Looking Prepared".

3rd Party Body Language Lie Detector

I have an idea of how to catch people in lies that will be more accurate than a lie detector machine.

When one is being questioned in a crime also place the person who is the suspected companion nearby.

Start with the usual lie detector questions, like “Is your name XXXXXX XXXXX, Jr.?” And so on.

Then after a few asking settled routine questions hit him with why he is there. “Did you rob the convenience store?” He or she may be smooth and have a believable response. It is not so much how the suspect responded but what kind of expression and body language is the companion doing? If the companion has a non-expression blank stare then the suspect did it.

I didn’t make this up. A friend of mine in Texas that I email communicate with regularly told me that her preacher is bad about attendance. They never know if he will show up or not for things at their church.

If he is a non show the female custodian fills in.

Not long ago he was late for his pulpit time on Sunday morning. She told me he said he had a flat tire. She expressed her doubts that he was telling the truth. She said when he told that story his wife and mother, there with him, did not change expressions, they looked straight ahead. They didn’t nod in agreement or anything, they just looked straight ahead.

What more proof do you need?

Yesterday's Day in History, Groucho Marx's Death

Julius “Groucho” Marx (Oct 2, 1890 – Aug 19, 1977) died on yesterday’s date, August the 19th, 1977, at age 86.

Groucho was the ring leader of the comedy team “The Marx Brothers”. I used to love to watch them because their humor was anarchistically* funny. If somebody appeared to command respect the Marx Brothers gave him ridicule. They turned the most formal respected occasions into babbling snafus.

Groucho was known for his rapid-fire delivery of whimsical innuendos while walking off his nervous energy bent over and smoking his cigar.

In his later year he was the emcee of the quiz show YOU BET YOUR LIFE where he got to exercise his sharp quit wit. He is still quoted on one wise-crack he made to a couple that had many children, "I like my cigar too, but I know when to take it out."

*I made that word up.

A Funny Thing Happened On the Way To ...

I am almost always early when I am to be at a certain place at a certain time. Some would say I have a fear of being late. I am not quiet that bad. I think a slight compulsion to be early would better describe me, and 99% of Hunters my age or older who share my genes.

The other day I had an eye doctor appointment at 9:30am, which I was 15 minutes early for. What I didn’t realize or remember, they also had me down for a depth and peripheral vision test at 9:00am.

We came strolling in at 9:15am thinking we were about 15 minutes early. I carried a book to read during the time waiting. The receptionist leaned over and saw the name I wrote and said, “Mr. Hunter, are you aware you were to be here at 9:00?”

My heart leaped. I thought maybe grasping at my heart was in order. What me late? “At 9:00?” I asked.

The receptionist said I was to come in at 9:00 for tests and then see the eye-doctor at 9:30. She added she would go back and see if they can still do the eye test.

She went back and returned with a technician at her heels. She said since it was only my left eye that is giving me the problem she thought she can make it by 9:30. One eye is quicker.

When I got inside the room for the tests I apologized for being late and she broke in and says, “That is why we tell people to be on time, if someone is late it backs everything up.”

I wanted to say, “I know, I know! I have felt that way all my adult life! And normally I see people waltzing in 15 to 30 minutes late and no big deal was made.” But I didn’t. Her hands were on the controls.

When the female doctor did see me she looked over all the facts, tests and latest eye pressure numbers and said the new eye drops she prescribed are not doing any good.

She said laser surgery was the only solution. She put me in the hands of her assistant nurse to make the arrangements. Both the doctor and the nurse assured me laser eye surgery for glaucoma is a piece of cake. They said it only takes about an 5 minutes, and after about an hour wait, they check certain things to see how it went, and then I could go out and go to a party if I wanted to.

I will undergo laser surgery in about two weeks. I will be a piece of cake. What kind of cake?

When Anna and I got into the car I said, “Well, I know not to be late again! They operate!!”

On down the road a mile or so Anna said she didn’t understand something the doctor had said, she said the explanation was blurred. I told her blurred was a good choice for a word at the moment.

Stick around, I got a million of ‘em, I tellya!

Stop the Bubble Machine!

Late yesterday afternoon with a flick of the eye all my cookies and favorite vanished from my computer.

What happened is that I wanted to scan something and noticed my printer/scanner was off. I turned it on and it still did not recognize I had a scanner. Most of the time when you first turn on the computer it checks around of all things on and hooked up and that is what it thinks it has. If you turn on something afterwards, like the scanner, it will not recognize it is there. I turned off and on the computer by the "restart" selection.

It went off and instantly came back on. Missing all that I said, plus my email.

It is a new computer. I called the help desk. A man with an Indian accent very patiently helped me. He walked me through many things and only got defensive and snappy once. Sometime during our telephone conversation it came out that he was in India.

He not only fixed the problem I called about but for a little added bonus he either brought out or loaded a screensaver on my computer. LIttle bubbles, like kids blow with little bubble blowers starting floating on the screen. Then I heard a "meow!"

I expected a cat to come on the screen and start swatting at the bubbles, all part of the show. But no cat appeard. The bubbles stopped eventually and we heard the "Meow!" again.

"What's that?" we asked.

You could tell the technician was embarrassed. He humbly said, "My cat".

That's it. It made him human, that's all.

Disavowing BP

In about August of 1965 I went to work for Sinclair Refining Company in Atlanta. I worked there three years before going to work for the Atlanta Post Office.

I worked in the office of the Sinclair warehouse the whole time.

After I was there about two years British Petroleum (BP) bought out Sinclair. As you may have guessed, BP's central headquarters was in England.

One of the high ranking officers and major stock holder of BP sent his son Tim B. to America to work with us. He was there to learn from the ground up the Sinclair business so as BP slowly over the operations Tim would know what was going on.

Tim was a tall lean person that had a very gentle British accent. Although he was probably worth millions, you would never know it. He was a very humble He was very proud that his first cousin was British pop singer Ian Whitcomb.

Tim was about my age and we we got along great. Not only on the clock but after work sitting on a car hood having a beer at the Riverside Package Store. We also went bar hopping and partys. We also double dated. I was dating Anna and married her during this same time period. I think Anna may have fixed Tim up with a date or two.

When I jointed Sinclair I signed up for their payroll-deduction stock-option plan. The company would match every dollar I put into it, providing I kept it for a certain length of time, five years I think it was. BP observed the same policy.

When I got a job at the post office I gave my branch manager a letter of resignation informing him I was giving a two week notice. In the letter I closed it by saying, "I will continue to promote BP's good name". That was my way of not burning any bridges behind me.

Wait! I want to know - was that letter a valid contract? Can I back down on the "promote BP's good name" part? After breaking the rules and ruining a good portion of the planet which will have consequences on down the line for a long time, I don't want to support BP's good name. I may get out of it on a technicality - what good name?

I know what you are thinking. You are thinking, "Hmmmmm..rubbed elbows with one of the major stockhholders of BP and was a stockholder himself....hmmmm"

Wait! I cashed my stock in as soon as the waiting time was up to help pay down on a house, and I never heard from Tim B. after I resigned, and besides I have an alibi for April 20, 2010. Anna will swear that I mailed back to AT&T two cell-phones that day. They sent us 4 and we only needed 2. So, I couldn't have been in the Gulf of Mexico that day could I?

I have nothing to do with BP any more (I say, shifting my eyes back and forth).

Bring in the Raw Clowns!

This morning when I woke up and went to the computer. This comment was waiting:

haha well told. MRI's are already a horrible experience. Anyway great writing, you're very funny. I'm on a hunt for entertaining blogs and this post was a nice introduction to yours


It is always a pleasure to get a complement. And to get one first thing in the morning? What a way to start a day!

I clicked on the sender's underlined name, or in this case, blog name, and swam upstream, so to speak.

The sender is Valerie Wangnet in Sydney, Australia. Her blog CULTURE SERVED RAW is very neat, eye appealing, and tastefully well planned. All the posts that I saw on her blog dealt with sex in interesting, ironic, or bizarre stories. I guess that is why it is called Culture in the Raw.

Click here to check it out yourself.

But now, that I know what I know about her through her blog, I am wondering when she said I am very funny, is she laughing with me or at me?

The Eye That Sees All

Last week I went to a glaucoma surgeon. She did a very detailed study of my eye that shows signs of glaucoma. She determined to first try to treat it medically before considering an operation.
That suits me!
She prescribed Travatan Eye Drops. She told me this medication may make my eyebrows bushy and it may turn my eye brown which means I might have one brown eye and one hazel eye. She asked me was I OK with that.

“Yes, why not?” I might look exotic – a man of intrigue and mystery.

After we left I thought I wished I had asked her can she prescribe some eye drops that will cause that eye to turn red and glow in the dark and maybe the other eye too. How would that be for intrigue and mystery?