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KeithSpeak - August 2012

 

 
 
 
August 1, 2012
Today, the beginning of August, is the furthest thing from this dog's mind.
 
August 3, 2012
This never happens. I got a credit card sent to me with someone else's name on it. The envelope and inside paperwork had my name and correct mailing address (and we do have an existing card with this company), but the credit card inside was in someone else's name with a different account number. Jeez, if I were the nefarious sort partial to larceny, I would be using this card all up, Christmas in August. Instead, I told the company. They told me to shred the card. It was kind of anticlimactic.
 
August 5, 2012
The dogs are mad at me. One after another they keep coming into the living room and howling at me. I have been watching the Olympics nonstop and they are tired of it. They want to go to the lake, they want to go out for walks, they expect to be fed - I tell them, I am not a machine! But they don't care. Who will crack first?
 
August 8, 2012
When I asked him about his new girlfriend, he described her as a "tantalizing morsel". Though I abhorred the poshness of it, I was more worried that my buddy had felt the need to wax poetic, a trait, before her, completely absent in him. Really, before her, all he used to do was grunt. Now, I don't know.
 
August 10, 2012
OMG, the clowns are naked!
 
August 13, 2012
I'm back. The London Olympics are in the books. My couch cushions are permanently dented, my retinas haven't quite adjusted to a non HD world, and my voice is hoarse from yelling at the athletes, refs and annoying broadcasters. Canada won one gold. In trampoline. How does that happen?
 
August 14, 2012
I needed a few more terabytes of storage so I went online and researched 3TB external hard drives. Then I went into a computer store to see what they had. What they had was a price markup of 85%. Negotiate? Seems that was beneath them. Discount? That was for other computer shops. So the choice was to pay these nerd-snobs their jacked up price and take it home right then or order it online for what it should cost and wait at least 10 days to get it. I spy Fed Ex coming down my driveway - and they have a package for me! Keith 1, nerd-snobs 0.
 
August 15, 2012
This is supposed to be Missy Franklin's first post-Olympic endorsement item - The Missy Franklin 100 meter freestyle teacup, but they put her in Team Sweden colors and she is said to be pissed. She is said to be thinking about firing her manager, Beau "Swifty" Beauchamp, who defended the decision to paint her in Swedish team colors because though Missy's parents are Canadian, the teacup factory had tons of blue and yellow paint leftover from another job. "It just made sense", Swifty shrugged. "How does anyone even know it's me?" Missy countered. Swifty fell silent.
In the race to capitalize on her fame, Missy Franklin just false started.
 
August 16, 2012
Like a character in a Monty Python sketch, this old British fellow kept trilling his Rs. Any word that started with one R, never came out of his mouth with less than half a dozen trailing behind. It was so affected, I called him on it: Why you trilling the Rs? I asked. "Ah, it's from my Colonial days back in India (Injah)," he said. "I found the locals hated it - so I kept it up. Used to bedevil the little brown buggers something fierce! Proper British starch did those people a world of good. I miss the subjugation." Yikes, did Monty Python not thrive on such awfulness as this?
 
August 17, 2012
I was in a guy's office looking at the framed certificates, pictures and plaques on his wall while he finished up a phone call. I stopped when I come across a framed golf score card from the Old Course at St. Andrews - showing him having shot a 60! This had to be fake. Why would he put a fake score card on his wall of achievements? I had to ask him. But what if I ask him and he claims it's real? That would put me in a tough position because I do not in any way, shape or form believe that this 50 year old desk bound paper pushing dude went out and shot a 60 at the Old Course. So I didn't say anything.
 
August 18, 2012
While artistically arresting, these streets are brutal to walk on for humans and horses alike. So we here at Keith Ryan Publishing would like to give a long overdue shout out to the inventor of tarmac, Edgar Purnell Hooley of Swansea. Way to go, Edgar.
 
August 19, 2012
Meteorologists! You know how when they promise a fantastic meteor shower exactly in our neck of the sky and it turns out to be a perfectly clear night with a billion visible stars and you go up in your field with your wife and your dogs and some alcohol and snacks, warm blankets and soft pillows, and you're all comfy and ready for a dazzling night of nature's best and then you get like 4 meteors the whole night? You know that disappointment? Worse, is when sometime later, maybe 6 months, maybe a year or two, they will once again announce a fantastic meteor shower due on such and such a date and you'll say to yourself, Why do I feel like Lucy is ready to snatch the ball away from Charlie Brown again? Meteorologists!
 
August 20, 2012
-- I think this maze looks like the outside of a brain.
-- Stop that crazy talk, Gerald! You're driving me crazy with all your brain this and brain that! I'm sorry. It's just that I'm worried. Do you know how we got here?
-- No, I was just following you.
-- Gerald, I'm scared.
-- Cynthia, this brain maze doesn't have us beat yet!
-- It's just that I have abandonment issues, Gerald.
-- You were abandoned? As a child?
-- Yes, in a maze. I lived my first few years eating berries off the bushes and wandering around finding nothing but dead ends. Of course, I was too small to see over anything.
-- Oh Cynthia!
-- Finally the hedge blight of '92 allowed me to find my way out. This is the first maze I have been in since.
-- My god, Cynthia! That is the most incredible story. Now I think we should split up to find our way out, we'll cover more territory that way. Cynthia? Why are you looking at me like an axe murderer?
-- That's the last thing my family said to me before they abandoned me in the maze, Gerald. And I swore I would never let that happen to me again...
-- Cynthia, no, please!
 
August 21, 2012
This is kind of neat. Apparently he uses electronic looping to get this sound. Best busker ever? 
 
August 22, 2012
Overheard in line at the grocery:
-- So I hear that Steven cancelled the trip.
-- Oh man, was his wife pissed.
-- So why did he do it? They were on the waiting list for like three years.
-- He learned about the Mayan Calendar ending in December. They were scheduled to leave in January. He cancelled everything because the world won't be here by then.
-- Are you kidding me?
-- His wife wants to kill him. They even had to forfeit their deposit.
-- Steven's an idiot.
-- I know. I asked him why he didn't take out trip insurance.
-- No, I mean for believing in the supposed end-of-the-world Mayan Calendar thing.
-- What do you mean? It's not real?
-- The world isn't going to end on December 21, 2012.
-- What do you mean?
-- What do you mean what do I mean?
-- I've already started maxing out my credit cards because I wasn't going to have to pay it back. What do you mean it's not going to end?
-- That's all media hype.
-- Oh my god. Does Steven know?
-- No.
-- Don't say a word! He will be so bummed the world isn't ending!
-- Lucky for him there is still hope, because when December 22nd rolls around and the sun comes up and the world is still the world and his wife realizes that he cancelled their trip of a lifetime for nothing...it could be the end of Steven.
 
August 23, 2012
His old passphrase was, 'Sex with Julie Akers must smell like cupcakes and maple syrup'. Julie Akers was in the cubicle to his left and said she was always nauseated by his presence, none so more strongly than when she learned what his sign in passphrase was for the company computers. So he changed it to, 'Caudell Tiffins is a stinkybutt'. Caudell Tiffins was in the cubicle to his right and would never know, or so he thought. but Caudell's cousin, Byron "Rainman" Tiffins, worked in IT and discovered the passphrase slur. He showed Caudell and Caudell demanded it be changed. So he was looking around at the other cubicles to see who to smear next when up popped this message on his computer screen:
IT has assigned you a new company passphrase.
It is, 'I am an immature git.'
Every time you sign in, don't thank us, thank yourself.
 
August 24, 2012
FLASHES FROM THE PAST
 
Bush’s latest plan is to launch flying cars at Iraq. Said Bush, "Heck, we got lots of those exploding Pintos and deathtrap Chevettes sitting all over America. I thought to myself, why don’t we fill up the gas tanks and pack the backseats with M-80’s and stuff and launch ’em at Saddam? It’d be fun for the boys and clean up America too! So we're doing it. I know a good plan when I see one."
 
After failing to scare Iraq with his flying cars, Bush has decided that Iraqi grandmas could be terrorist threats if given the right situation, access to explosives, sudden agility, new found stealth, and a darkened night, and has ordered that all grandmas be caged and shuttled by tractors to secret locations in the countryside. Bush added that, "A foreign geezer with a potential bomb is, well, a foreign geezer with a potential bomb." And the masses wept.
 
August 25, 2012
You don't always have to know what something is to appreciate it.
 
August 26, 2012
Neil Armstrong died yesterday, and not one commemorative article mentioned this most incredible fact: Neil Armstrong was from Wapakoneta, Ohio; the Wright brothers were from Dayton, Ohio; these towns are 55 miles apart. Of all the people ever born, anywhere, throughout time, on the entire face of the Earth, the inventors of flight and the first man to walk on the moon were born and raised 55 miles apart. Isn't that highly incredible?
 
August 27, 2012
I had chocolate pudding for breakfast. It was tasty and invigorating. In fact, I'm going out on a nutrition limb here to say that chocolate eaten at any time of the day is a wondrous act and a miraculous aid to both one's constitution and demeanor, but that which is consumed at breakfast may be, may be the most delicious of all.
 
August 28, 2012
A long time ago I had an experience that was one thing on the surface, and another underneath the surface. Only I didn't know that at the time, I only saw and reacted to the surface event. Just moments ago I realized what was really going on - and it was the complete opposite of what I thought. Two decades later, don't I feel the fool.
 
August 30, 2012
I've been battling wasps. 5 days ago, as I was letting the dogs into our field I got stung by a wasp. We went for a walk and then exited through the same gate - and again, I got stung by an unseen wasp. The next day, I let the dogs back into our field for another walk and both Maddie and I got stung this time. I observed our entry gate and sure enough, discovered a wasp nest attached to the underside of a metal plate that was welded to the gate. The battle was on because this is the main gate we use to enter and exit our field and I was determined to continue to use it without getting stung. I went down to the barn and located an eight foot piece of bamboo that I took back up to the field gate. From a distance, I knocked off the wasp nest and once it hit the ground, I flicked it 15 feet away. I returned the next day to see that they had rebuilt the nest in the same place on the gate! I again knocked it off and fled the scene. The next day, the nest was still gone but where it had been was a bundle of about 20 wasps in a knot. I got a big bucket of water and threw it on them. They dispersed. The 4th day I saw that there were maybe 8 wasps that were still clinging to the old nesting spot. Another bucket of water. On the 5th day, there are now two wasps persistently clinging to the old spot, but the danger appears to have been mitigated. The dogs and I can now go in and out of the gate without being stung. The two wasps will eventually bugger off, so all is back to normal in paradise. Whew.
 
August 31, 2012
Whenever my accountant says something like, Lord a mighty, what in the hell have you done now! I am reminded of this Arthur Miller quote: "I'm sure there are writers who are good businessmen, but I never met any."
 

 
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