On the other hand, more and more of my assignments are about dieting, skin care or weight pills. After a couple of years of getting essentially the same topics, it has become increasingly frustrating to create entertaining entries of the same mundane phrases.

Last week, I received a phrase that was almost impossible to write with. “Almost impossible” he said with a sly wink. After thinking I had reached my limits, here’s what I finally wrote. What do you think?

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Yep, I don’t feel any older than I did 10 or 20 years ago. Well, most of the time. The only difference was in the birthday party I just had. Ever played “Sag, you’re it” with a bunch of 40 and 50 year olds? ::: shudder :::

It wasn’t that bad. The weather was sunny and windy. This helped out a lot when a gusty breeze liberated a few toupees … off of the men too. Yes sir, there’s nothing like a rousing game of “Pin the wig on the bald guy”. We were going to play “Pin the tail on the donkey” but none of the politicians RSVP’ed my invitation.

Did we quit after this? Heck no! After a few (well, several) beers, we played that fun-filled adventure game, “Hide and go pee.” Some of us had a great time with this and others … not so much. Did it make a difference? “Depends”

One of the joys of aging is enjoying the rewards from years of hard work and trying to take care of everyone. This is otherwise known as high blood pressure. The cure is medicine that fixes your heart by generating a loud ringing in your ears. As a result, you tend to miss out on things such as “I love you” and “Watch out! You’re about to step in front of a bus!” But it does make for a great game of “Simon says … what?! What did he say?!”

All good times must end so we concluded my day of festivities by storming the Lazy-Boy store to play “Musical Recliners.” This game is only good for one round because everyone gets a chair. And we didn’t leave until we were good and ready. When the store manager brought the police in, we suddenly found ourselves good and ready.

We were going to play “Kick the Bucket” but thought we’d wait a few more years. Just as with “Red Rover, Red Rover, Doctor says Bend Over”, no activity should be more of a goal than a game. Now “Keep Away … from The Bucket” would be a great game. Everyone wins, mostly.

Hope to see you next year!

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So the company missed their fantasy income by almost half a million dollars. Judging by the hastily arranged meetings, our fearless leaders didn’t realize the mistake until last Thursday. Then, panic ensued among the powers-that-be. To make up the $500,000, they quickly decided that we should cut our pay and hours to give them almost $50,000 in savings. OOOOOOOooooooo! That’ll satisfy those mean ol’ bankers.

Of course, the exercise did provide us some valuable lessons about our employer. When management announced who would have their hours cut and by what amount, it was obvious that company leaders have not a clue about who is critical to the operation of their business. When they told us that we would have to work harder, we realized that they don’t know or care about the tremendous effort of unpaid overtime, the multiple jobs that each of us have had to take on and numerous sacrifices we’ve already made to help keep the business going.

If anyone had doubts about leaving, this is no longer the case. I believe I am watching the end-of-days drama of a company as it is run by bean counters and sales instead of by principled business leaders. The countdown begins….

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When you look back through history, it’s amazing how seemingly intelligent people will blindly and fanatically accept half-truths and outright falsehoods as gospel. Of course, it helps if you’re in power and you need something scary to keep those ignorant peons in check. When someone doubts your story, that’s usually the last thing they’ll ever do … aside from setting an example for the rest of the unwashed masses. And it never hurts to throw a little money around to have ‘reputable’ people back your erroneous tales with a few fun ‘facts’ of their own.

Today, we don’t have such crafty kings and devious popes to mislead us. We have the likes of Foxy Loxy Gore who has garnered a flock of Chicken Littles. (Funny how none of them question Foxy Gore’s hypocritical life style — gas guzzle vehicles and homes with a carbon footprint larger than a family of Bigfoots.) But if you can scare or belittle or find enough low self-esteemed people who hate human kind, you too can win a Nobel Peace prize. Not only that but your followers will form groups and participate in Blog Action Day where prime ministers and religious leaders take time to regale all of us with the monsters of global warming.

Yes, human-caused global warming must be true because thousand of scientists say that it is so. Just because these studied fellows are paid by governments who need a good reason to tax and control their citizens, this doesn’t discredit the researchers’ work. Besides, any one who disputes their findings is an idiot. Apparently, the thousands of other high ranking scientists (some who have won real Nobel prizes) must be drooling baboons because they’ve discounted human causes and proved other, more vital causes of global warming. Amazingly, this latter group wasn’t paid to prove anything. These deniers-to-the-cause followed that silly practice of only looking for the facts.

And the fact is that the globe is warming up. Just because unseasonable cold weather has occurred repeatedly around the planet most of this decade, that doesn’t mean global warming isn’t happening. The cause is just waiting to catch us off guard. Thus, we must band together to defeat a sneaky evil monstrosity that threatens to cook our planet in its own juice. That’s right! I mean the sun! It is bad enough when the sun blazes down on us in summer, erasing the polar caps, evaporating the snows of winter, and melting the ice cubes in our drinks. Now, thanks to verified reports that our malicious solar companion is heating up, our ice cubes will soon be melting in spring and fall too. This must be stopped! I know I can count the support of my fellows compatriots who make candles, manufacture light bulbs and produce electricity. They will readily agree that we need less sun and more cool darkness. I’m also pretty sure we can count on our Vampire brethren, sorry, our hemoglobin-challenge friends for their efforts to protect us from the sun. There may be a rumble between them and politicians as to who is the best parasite on human kind but that beats having the planet become a charred briquet. Yes?

Now some of you may be a little offended by this post. I apologize. You can do something immediately to reduce the human causes of global warming. Please take the hand of your fellow lemming and run, don’t walk, into the awaiting sea, breath deep the healing waters of our mother ocean, and sleep eternal knowing that your hot air won’t be harming the planet again.

You would think that the point of Blog-Action-Day is to draw attention and hopefully generate action on real problems in the world – human atrocities in Africa, needless poverty caused by greedy and ineffective governments — you know, actual human suffering that can be helped immediately. Instead blogactionday.org wasted a lot of people’s time and energy to focus on a problem that may or may not be a problem. Thanks, guys! Can’t wait for next year. I’ll bring the sun tan lotion … and an extra sweater … just in case.

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Overall, Life is very good!

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Actually it wasn’t that bad. When my girlfriend and her daughter came for a visit a few weeks ago, they saw my pile of cutup wire hangers, some screws and washers, and an old wooden board. Then they smiled at me with that knowing smile and the expression of “Well, he is special. Now, let’s go find his helmet before anything else happens.”  But then I hooked my contraption to my television.  When I turned on my TV and they saw the crystal clear reception … well, who’s laughing now?!

Actually, I build this because television broadcasters will be forced to switch from over-the-air analog television signals to a digital version.  Rabbit-ear antenna just ain’t goin’ get those TV signal like it used to.

If you want to find out which stations you can receive over-the-air now, check out: tvfool.com

NOTE: this post was started on March 17th and finally published on September 5th. sheesh!

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Anyway, no one knows where the dental digits came from but I have my theory. The teeth belong to a robber. It’s obvious when you realize how hard Wal-Mart works to take the bite out of crime. This may explain why my local Wal-Mart has instituted random .. um, cavity .. searches of shoppers. Sure, it’s annoying. But since it’s free, who can really complain about a free check-up with every check-out?

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