Goooood morning, Tuesday travelers! Roads are easy to navigate, turns easy to negotiate, but traffic will easily aggravate. I will never understand the character flaw that compels certain drivers to poke along at some ungodly-slow speed, as long as they are next to another vehicle on Highway 18 (okay, sure… maybe this driver is too terrified to go faster, and too simple to understand that driving side-by-side with another vehicle is the most dangerous place to be… I understand that some folks are just not terribly bright), preventing all other vehicles from passing. But, when they finally do (accidentally!) allow a gap through which others may pass, they now find the courage, the motivation, the drive and the horsepower to do 75 MPH, for the sole purpose of making damn sure that nobody passes them. And there’s no exception to the rule: the third phase of their WTFery WILL include catching up to the NEXT ultra-slow car, and getting on the binders to match that car’s crawlspeed for the next six days/15 miles (whichever comes last). So, no… the slow part was NOT due to terror or vehicle weakness… it was simply because of a need to CONTROL other traffic. I simply don’t understand that character flaw. My assumption is that these are weak people, who may find this to be the only way to control other people… and control is apparently what they crave.
Holy smokes… that sounded like a rant! If my blood pressure gets any higher, I’m going to have to poke a hole somewhere, in order to reduce the possibility of exceeding burst limits. I’m pretty sure that’s the way to handle that… I read it somewhere on the Internet.
Okay, roads are dry for the most part… precipitation is not currently precipitating. There is a little bit of fog but it’s very light and very patchy… nothing to be concerned over. Wind and rocks are not factors in the ease of your ride, and while temps are around 32ish, I was unable to detect any ice or snow. As mentioned, roads are mostly dry but even the wet spots are probably still basking in the ambient warmth of the earth below.
Last week, headlines read that a giant tuna had fetched $3.1 million dollars. Heck, maybe they’ll let me borrow it sometime: if I can get the thing to fetch ANY money, I’ll be pretty happy. My dog only fetches sticks, and even if my dog fetched giant sticks of solid gold, they’d have to be ones that I was already holding, to throw for him. Pointless… I wouldn’t even throw those. Just let me borrow the fabulous fetching fish, puh-LEEEEEAAAAAZE!!!!
Pho Keene Great! That was the name a business that was scheduled to open soon, in Keene, NH, according to signs posted in the window. The restaurant will serve the Vietnamese dish, pho (rejoice, my friends: it IS pronounced “fuh”!). This restaurant’s name was seen as offensive by 3% of over 3,500 people polled, so, in order to curry favor with the easily offended/no-sense-of-humor/Hanoi-d-at-everything crowd, the city council has ordered signs to be removed. According to the rules of their charter, titled “Chow Mein Kampf,” this sort of bull Szechuan is how they do it there. I think that the council is wong, and totally egg-dropped the ball on this one. Now, presumably, since the council has a beef with this name, the business will need to chang its name to sum ting different. This wanton disregard of the First Amendment has me wishing the city council the Vietnamese Flu, or, “Tofu Cough.” At least the restaurant can still say, “we cater… to the minority!” Whatever… I still think the name is great… like, “Sofa King” great!
Speaking of polls, and statistics: A recent worldwide survey showed that out of 3,188,622,145 people polled, 94% were too lazy to actually read that number. In other news, it turns out that 82.7% of statistical percentages are simply made-up by the claimant.
Okay, today’s trivia: When asked why he chose the name Piggly Wiggly, founder Clarence Saunders replied, “So people will ask that very question.” Well… that makes sense! You may recall a few days ago in this column, my lamentation over the fact that I simply could not understand the reasons for the naming of certain products (I cited Grape-Nuts and Blimpie). However, Piggly Wiggly is another name I would not have even dreamed of, let alone chosen, but Mr. Saunders certainly created a fabulously successful chain of stores, perhaps in part because of a brilliant naming strategy, that to this very day, keeps people talking about it!
There’s an advertisement on the radio, which I have heard a few times in the past few days. It’s from an air-conditioning service company in Los Angeles. The pitchman is explaining why it’s so important to call them today and have them service your AC. He says that many heaters operate by working the air-conditioning system in reverse… and he explains that this is “like running a 29-mile marathon, then turning around and running the whole 29 miles back!” I have no idea what a “29-mile marathon” is. I suspect it is similar to a 70-second minute, a Chevrolet Dodge, an honest politician, a free lunch, or horse feathers.
I almost forgot my opportunity to provide you with a fish joke as a nod to the $3.1 million-dollar-fetching wonder tuna! Here: What’s the difference between a piano and a fish? Anybody? Well… you can tune a piano, but you can’t tune a fish…
See you all tomorrow: same place, same channel, same time… different words!