Picking My Brain 10-26-13

As I sit here writing this, it’s Saturday morning, and this post is way overdue. It’s always difficult for me to pick a topic on which to write. I suppose I need to learn to discipline myself more, but that’s the problem with trying to learn to be disciplined – it takes discipline, and since I clearly lack it, I’m probably going to have a tough time learning it. Sure I was in the Air Force when I was young and wanted to put off paying back my college loans (Note: I’m one of the fourteen Americans who actually did pay back his student loans),

Pheasant Plucker

I wouldn’t try saying this in front of the kids.

Picking My Brain 09-12-31

My first attempt to do these by video. Please let me know what you think. About any of it. Oh, and, sorry, I couldn’t resist channeling Cletus the Slack-Jawed Yokel at the end there. That kind of thing will happen.

Picking My Brain 08-04-27

So are the Mets interested in winning this year or not? Should I be investing a lot of emotion into following them all the way to the end of the season? Or should I just turn off the TV and wait for football season to start?

Craig Ferguson was fantastic at last night’s White House Correspondents Association’s Dinner last night. Go to C-SPAN to find the video of it. And I must admit that Bush was pretty funny, too.

Commercials as I’ve seen it on TV:

Announcer: Did you know that one in three men will experience prostate problems at least once in their lifetime?
Man: One in three?
Announcer: Yes, the other two will be dead by then.

David Attenborough, Nature Documentary Narrator: We’re here to observe a fascinating creature, the Geico Gekko, which has the remarkable ability to save people money on their car insurance. Let’s watch.
(cut to Geico Gekko, standing on top of an old woman, punching her, yelling)
Gekko: Where’s my money? Where’s my money, Mary? (punch) Where is it? You told me you’d have it today! (punch, punch)
Mary, between sobs: I told you I don’t have it yet. (gets slapped) Please stop hurting me.
Gekko: Don’t lie to me, Mary! I saw your Social Security check in your mail box this morning! (punch, punch)
Attenborough: Fascinating.
Okay, so maybe they showed a slightly different version in your area.

I’m fascinated by some of the reaction to my opinion post that the police should not be allowed to use deadly force when no actual danger exists but what is in their minds. People seem to want to jump at the chance to allow the police to use deadly force at, what is for all intents and purposes, their own discretion. I do not understand it

That’s it for this edition of Picking My Brain. Join us next time when we hear Sandy Duncan say, “Aw, crap, has anybody seen my eye? It popped out again!”

Picking My Brain 08-04-08

Hi! If you haven’t already stopped by, welcome to my new blog location. My name is Wayne, and I’ll be your tour guide. Please keep your heads and arms inside the vehicle at all times, as I like to step on the gas a bit. This particular segment is the part of our show (and there may be more throughout the week) where I talk about various things that have been floating around in my brain, waiting to get picked out. Let’s see what came out on the end of my finger today, shall we?

I’ve said this before (and for other reasons), but these polls that they put out that ask, “If the election were held today, who would you vote for?” are really kind of dumb. The election isn’t being held today (*), so the entire premise of the question is meaningless. Therefore, the results can be safely ignored. It doesn’t matter who leads in them, because a single major gaffe just days before Election Day can throw those pre-election polls out the window. They should stop doing them until it gets closer to having meaning. There, I said it and I’m glad.

Well, my beloved New York Mets are getting the heartache out of the way early this year. They’re already playing under-.500 ball, but at least their division is the tightest one yet in the first week of Major League Baseball 2008 (“Now Mostly Steroid-Free”). Plenty of time to go. Plenty of time to start drinking again.

Why, oh, why does MSNBC continue to allow Tucker Carlson to sit in front of a functioning camera? Last night he was shouting the Right-Wing Look-Over-There Talking Point about how we should forget about how we got into this war in Iraq because we’re there! Well, in a nutshell, Tucker, the point we’re making is that it was the Right Wing’s entire thought process about this whole invasion of Iraq that needs to be fleshed out and exposed, and that means talking about how we were lied to from the very beginning about the actual danger that Iraq posed to the U.S. Therefore, the opinions of the people who got us there are, as far was we’re concerned, not to be given too much weight. Voice them, but don’t expect them to be heeded. Why can’t you people understand that? Or is it because you do not want the truth exposed?

Okay, a word about (what I hope) will be the routine here. That is, until either personal boredom or “customer satisfaction” demands that I change it. Here’s what you’ll see throughout the week.

As you have already seen, I’ll be trying to start the week off with a joke each Monday morning. You may not know this about me, but I enjoy trying to make people laugh. (You’ve got something on your shoe.) I sincerely hope you didn’t just look down at your shoe. I get one point for each one of you that did.

After the driving I did over the weekend and commuting to work yesterday, I can see I’m going to need to do more work on my “Driving Me Crazy” series. Visitors of my former blogsite will recognize the first three inthe series when they come up starting this Wednesday, and there should be more after that. I confess right now: I have no patience for stupidity. It’s not that I do not suffer fools gladly, it’s that I do not suffer fools.

Fridays will be Parody Days, usually of a song most people are, more or less, familiar with. One of the reasons I decided to move over here was because it seemed easier to upload videos, and I didn’t feel like waiting for the other guys to fix their problem, so I decided to start moving stuff here. I plan to have a video to go along with each song parody (not of my words, but the original), to make it easier to follow the new lyrics. That’s easier to do on WordPress. (For now.) And one of the reasons I started my blog was to put my song parodies up for the world to see, enjoy, and critique (one way or the other; I value your honest feedback.)

Two of my works that I am proud of are on separate pages, accessible to the right (under “Pages”). They are “The Craving”, a poem about the Bush Administration and his/its quest for power under the Unitary Executive (and I even managed to work those words into it!) Theory. And it’s done in the style of Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven” (“Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered weak and weary…”). I hope you enjoy it and let me know what you think of it. The other is a parody of the entire rock oepra “Tommy” by The Who (minus the most boring song on the album). It’s about George Bush and the lengths he and his pals go to to preserve their phony baloney jobs. It even includes who’s supposed to be saying the lines, just like in the original liner notes. If I can find them, I hope to put up videos of them singing the various songs (as many as possible), but I promise that none will come from that horrid movie. I’ll let it slip when new ones get added. Don’t worry. Seriously, don’t worry.

Eventually we’ll find a day to throw up posts about our cats (some written by my lovely wife, Jane.) And we’ll find a way to put up Jane’s great nature photos for all to see and enjoy. The rest of the time will be filled in with Brain Pickings and Jokes. Like the one that hopefully appears right below this post (if I did it correctly). I hope you enjoy the site.

And welcome to my brain. Some dissembling required.

(*) Not valid on Election Day