The truth about women is that women rule the world. They are sensible and sane, and when driven to action they are extremely effective. Don’t cross them. The Glens Falls Post Star this morning reports:
FORT ANN — A 43-year-old woman has been charged with felony assault for allegedly beating a man with a piece of lumber, police said. Barbara A. Weaver, of Route 40, allegedly hit a man she knows in the back of the head twice, causing injuries that required treatment at Glens Falls Hospital.
As for women being effective, watch this video of a woman catching a bat in her house. Yeah, that’s cool —but look closely and you can see her male companion cowering outside the door, handing her the bat catching supplies. Dude!
Sorry to neglect Keyboard Krumbs, but work’s been a beast. And I really needed to deal with that mulch situation.
Look, I never guaranteed that the mulch would be gone on Memorial Day, I just said that I’d start working on it. Good thing, because had I made a guarantee, it would have ended up filed in the same place as Rick Dutrow’s guarantee, but not Joe Namath’s guarantee. So what did I do on Father’s Day? I got out there and finally eliminated what was left of the %$!&# mulch pile that had been mocking me for three weeks. I hope no one notices how thick it is in certain spots, or how well mulched the areas way under the bushes are, or how some of it may have inadvertently fallen over my neighbor’s fence. Ooops.
A lot of people in my neighborhood, the ones with the lush green carpets for lawns, actually make a face when they walk by my sorry excuse for a front yard. But I’m going to show them. That photo to the left is $120 worth of mulch, and by 8:00am today I’ll be outside spreading it in the flower beds.
On this Memorial Day, enjoy your parades and parties. Fill up the cooler with beer and head for a picnic. Throw a hamburger on the grill. But while you’re celebrating, take a moment to remember those who sacrificed to make all this possible.
I’d like to learn to play a musical instrument before I die. With any luck, that gives me another thirty or thirty-five years, which should be plenty of time. It’s not that I haven’t tried, like during my fourth grade fling with the trumpet. Never got the hang of that, but I could fake it passably enough to march in the Carle Place Memorial Day Parade. After I quit taking lessons I was afraid to tell my parents, so I’d leave with the trumpet in morning and hide it in the back yard. Long story.
Since then there was the guitar, the piano, the harmonica, the guitar again —and once after seeing a bluegrass show I wanted to learn how to play the banjo but had the good sense not to buy one.
But now I believe I’ve found something that might work for me: the ukulele. It only has four strings, so if you do the math it must be 20% easier than a guitar. And as you can see from this video, there are some cool things one can do with a uke:
Those with discerning tastes may also wish to see Gus and Fin playing The Buzzcocks classic “What Do I Get.”
I spent an hour at work yesterday watching YouTube videos of kids blowing things up. It was great! And no, I was not goofing off, I was doing research! It reminded me of when I was a wee lad, burning and exploding things with my friends. We’d build model airplanes and blow them up. We’d build model cars and set them on fire. We’d build model airplanes and cars with firecrackers inside them so they’d blow up when we burned them.
Estes rocket engines were attached to anything and everything. There were rocket cars and rocket boats and once a rocket Frisbee, which was swell until it caught fire. And we didn’t bother with the Estes electronic ignition system, instead we jammed fuses into the end of the rockets and lit them with a match. It’s a miracle I’m not called lefty today.
The strangest thing I remember doing was lighting small fires with my friends and putting them out by urinating on them. A shrink would have a field day with that, don’t you think?
All you hear now is people complaining about the dumb things kids do and post on YouTube, but you know what? The only difference between now and 35 years ago is video cameras and the internet —and a society that seems bent on taking the boy out of boyhood.
My standard of quality for grass is that it’s more green than brown. I know this makes me a pariah in a neighborhood of men who carefully cultivate and manicure the lawn, but to them I kindly suggest it’s time to get a freakin’ life. Plus it’s dangerous. Don’t they read the paper?
PITTSTOWN, N.Y. — A 65-year-old town man died today when the riding lawn mower he was operating flipped on an embankment and caught fire, trapping him underneath, State Police said.
DULUTH, Ga. - - A 35-year-old Fayette County man was killed Monday in a tragic accident. James Osborne Studdard, 35, was killed instantly when the lawn mower he was riding flipped over and fell about 8 to 10 feet off a terraced lawn. Capt. Frank Huggins of the Forsyth County Sheriff’s Office said, “No foul play is suspected.”
PINCKNEYVILLE, Ill. - - A Perry County man is killed after a lawn mowing accident. Deputies say 70 year-old Bill Mohr had been trimming the grass on a steep embankment outside his home, using a zero-turn radius lawn-mower. Officers say it slid down the hill and rolled over into a small body of water in Mohr’s back-yard, pinning him underneath.
BURLINGTON, Ky. – - An 86-year-old man was flown to University Hospital Tuesday afternoon after he suffered second-degree burns during an accident while refueling his lawn mower, according to Boone County emergency communication reports. He suffered burns to his hands and legs, reports state.
I will not poison the birds and bunnies to make the grass green, and I will not die for my lawn.
It’s really important to use the right cut of lumber for the job at hand. We can find an example of using the wrong dimension in this story from WNYT:
AMSTERDAM - Two adults and one juvenile were transported to the hospital Friday night after a large fight, according to Amsterdam police. They say the altercation happened on Green Street and Kimball Street around 6:45 pm. Police say a large group of juveniles and adults were fighting with 2 x 4 boards as weapons.
While a 2 x 4 is imposing, it’s very difficult to get a good grip on it. Why not use a 2 x 2 instead? It’s a lightweight alternative that you can easily wrap your hand around. Don’t forget: take the time to inspect your wood for flaws and knots, especially if you’ll be using it in a visible location —like out on the street in front of your house.
Nothing’s more satisfying than handing someone a pile of cash to do something you could yourself with the right tools. And a hydraulic lift. And maybe a class at HVCC. But after a $500 brake job, you don’t expect to hear a grating noise when your car is backing up. And I did.
SCRAPE-SCRAPE-SCRAPE! What the f…? That can’t be right. Not after my $500 BRAKE JOB! I pull out of the parking space and there it is again. SCRAPETY-SCRAPETY-SCRAPE. Now I’m furious —and getting ready to drive up (street name deleted) and march right into (repair shop deleted) to give those crooks a piece of my mind. A typical guy reaction at this point is to think, “Hmmmm. Maybe I can fix this myself.” Since ancient times this has been the undoing of many fine men, but I stuck my head under the fender and inspected the place where the wheel is connected to the that other thing. Nothing. I dropped to my belly and edged under the car. Well, that’s your problem right there. I reached way back and yanked out a branch that had stuck to the undercarriage. The rest of the afternoon? I basked in the smug satisfaction of my manly trifecta: smart, handy, and thrifty.
Ann was a little under the weather this week with a stomach bug. Always the caring and sensitive husband, when I got home from work I handed her the Clorox Clean-Up and asked her to wipe down the doorknobs, handles, and any other objects she may have touched. Did you get the remote? She waved a finger at me, and it wasn’t her index finger. Alrighty then.
Look, let’s get this straight: I’m not a germaphobe. If I were a germaphobe, would I allow the the dog eat pasta out of my mouth —and we’re not talking “Lady and The Tramp” style, we’re talking penne. Exactly. And if I were a germaphobe, would I consume perfectly good food that someone carelessly left in the kitchen garbage, or reach elbow deep into the sewer pipe in the basement? I rest my case. This isn’t about germs, this is a public health issue, and if you ask me that’s everyone’s responsibility.
You didn’t touch the refrigerator did you? She gave me that cute little wave again.
Last week we told you about the local cop in trouble for allegedly firing his potato gun at work. Today the TU has a B1 item that digs deeper into potato gun culture. The David Filkins story -his beat includes dumb guy stuff- makes it clear that spud shooting may be fun, but:
That does not mean penalties are less severe for those who use a potato cannon rather than a gun to commit a crime. Killing someone with a potato instead of a bullet would not mean a lighter sentence.
Interesting. I wonder if Dr. Michael Baden could determine that someone was killed by a potato, even if the potato had decomposed? Anyway, Filkins caught flack last Fall for writing about a Delmar man whose hobby is speeding on the Northway. People will probably complain that today’s story encourages kids to build potato guns —as if there aren’t enough examples of potato gun fun (and mayhem) on YouTube.
