I was listening to the radio in the car the other day and caught one of those sixty-second news breaks. They were talking about how Amtrak would love to scan luggage with the same (perceived) level of scrutiny as the airlines, but they just couldn’t afford to do it. Amtrak said the airline industry was given a tremendous sum of money by the U.S. Government to subsidize all the electronic whiz-bang sniffer-thingys (my terminology in case you were confused) and that the government would just have to do the same thing for them.
Then the kicker, an Amtrak spokesperson said - quite seriously - in rebuttal to the pressure to provide such high levels of baggage scanning, “…besides which, in our history a train has never been hijacked.” You could almost hear the sarcasm dripping out of the radio speakers onto my dashboard.
Ominous train hijacker: “Engineer, take me to Poukeepsie! And no funny business!”
Engineer: “But the tracks only run to Scranton…”
Brakeman: “Hey, aren’t you the guy from the news who hijacked a trolly car?”
I was trying to think of a funny way to write down this story my nephew’s wife told me. In the end, I couldn’t think of anything funnier than just presenting the facts as they were told to me. I know, I know… great writers everywhere are turning over in their graves. Not embellishing??? How does he consider himself a writer?!?! Yeah, well, I never saw Hemingway with a blog, so nyah. Of course, I never saw Hemingway write “nyah” - maybe Emerson on an off day, or Ogden Nash on a good day… In any case, on to the story.
My nephew, industrious lad that he is, had put in a hard day at his corporate job working software support for mega-unamed-900-pound-gorilla phone company in our local town. I’m sure he drove the family mini-van home that night psyching himself up for another couple hours of homework for night school business courses - which he’d get to as soon as all three kids had gone to bed and he and his wife had gotten a chance to clean up the leftover meat loaf and instant mashed potatoes. Several hours later, after four chapters, a two page paper, and every news update twice on CNN, he finally headed for bed.
It was later where my nephew’s wife relates the story. She woke up late that evening with my nephew stirring in his sleep. He sat up in bed and said the following:
“I have the reflexes…”
Then, she tells me there was a long pause, before he continued.
“…of a cow.”
If that weren’t enough already - and remember I said I had no need to embellish this story - he then exclaimed,
“Mooooo.”
You’d think all the laughter would have woken him up. But I guess not. After all, reflexes of a cow and all that.
I was looking at a black and white picture of a woman the other day. I thought, “Man, she’s hot!” Then I thought, “Man, she’s, like, 90 now.”
Remember next time you talk to your grandparents, Britney didn’t invent cleavage.
(I said remember it… not keep thinking about it)
Top ten reasons why 1 1/2 monthes passed without a web log entry…
10 - No Internet connections on safari in Africa.
9 - Busy preparing thank-you speech for Pulitzer Prize in literature.
8 - Amnesia.
7 - Finally finished swapping out all the outdoor lights from my Christmas decorations to red for Valentine’s day - missed February 14th deadline and had to swap out again with Green for St. Patrick’s day. Took several days to allow swelling in fingers to go down.
6 - VH1 Behind the Scenes marathon.
5 - Unable to sit in computer chair after alien abduction.
4 - Published a comedic interpretation of The Satanic Verses - Ayatollah still a poor sport.
3 - Just booted off latest Survivor series.
2 - Been on the run - Jen’s husband finally read November 4th and 5th log entries. Oops.
And… The number one reason why 1 1/2 monthes passed without a web log entry…
1 - Watching Barney and Teletubby with my daughter - and liking it - causes mental breakdown and need for reprogramming.