manlypoodlekip

If the Olympic Opening Ceremony has already happened but we in the US have not seen it, has it really happened? Is that something like not hearing one had clapping if the tree falls and no one hears it? Just one of the things I think about after drinking a large coffee from Portos. It’s good coffee. Did not find any relatives in Area 51 when I looked on Ancestry.com. Of course that might not be in any public records. Maybe I should check with the guy who hacked Target. At least some of my ancestors could have left some unclaimed bags of gold. But not so. This morning went for my morning walk in good ole Eagle Rock.Now one should not go for a morning walk in the afternoon as that could mess with the whole space time thingy. It would be like the earth being hit by an antimatter hairball from a cosmic cat. Anyway it was a beautiful day after a rain walk with everything seeming brighter and cleaner.

What will I do today? Perhaps decode the DNA of some fossil found in my backyard. Maybe I will be able to help in the achievement of world peace. Should I get tickets for Catching Fire?  Took  short walk this morning but went without a raincoat. What if I got a  gopro camera and filmed the walks around the neighborhood. Somehow I doubt that it would get a million hits. This is my first blog since Kip’s memorial. I will always remember the long walks we had together. It’s amazing how much a part of our lives that animals become. Just a thought I don’t think a werewolf would be a good walking companion.

Just read that eating nuts was very good for you heath. Another article from a year ago said that walnuts were the best but last night on national news the anchorman said all kinds of nuts. All kinds except ones raised on nuclear waste dumps. If you eat those you will probably glow in the dark. Well none of the former teachers from LACES was considered for “the sexiest man on earth.” Oh well. Am going to stop and walk dow to my backyard and watch the little things I planted grow. I forget what I planted where so it’s a nice surprise to see what the plants become. 

Having survived such a walk and escaping from what could have been hordes of zombies, vampires,werewolves, rabid feral house cats from France and anti public school Congresspersons, I sit here writing. Did I actually any of the above mentioned creatures? Of course not. The truth is that they do not come out in the midday sun. They will either wilt, turn to dust or be primaryed. Actually it was not as hot as Kipling’s midday sun. Indeed at moments it was even cool in the shade with a breeze sailing in from the coast.

As I journey on my paths I think of scenes for the movie for the retired persons. Scene l: Our heroes fresh out of RTBSHT (Retired Teacher’s Basic Superhero Training) are transported to a hill top park in Boston. As they munch on wholewheat and kale sandwiches they look down the hill to see a plethora of horrid creatures running and stumbling towards them. Rotting zombies, drooling werewolves, vampires with snarling rabid French feral housecats perched on their heads and shoulders and the snarling anti public school Congresspersons seemed ready to over run their position. As the hours passed and and the fighting increased in intensity our heroes faced doom. Out of ammunition and even having used all of Randy’s hoard of colored pen as spears they appeared lost. Then the masked hero, Don N began to glow and sparkle and from deep inside his very being came a silent command that stopped the evil ones in their tracks. Quietly they stopped and all sat down in neat rows.

School starts in two weeks.  Back-to-school ads are in all the media. When I was young back about the time we learned how to safely use fire, back-to-school ads made my poor little heart sink. Now i didn’t hate school just the thought of summer vacation ending. It’s kind of like Thursday being my favorite work day. It is close to the weekend but still a good distance from Monday. Since I am retired this has little meaning. Everyday is Thursday and I don’t have to go back to school. 

Just had “the talk” with my grandson. We were sitting on a bench waiting for the women of our group to finish shopping in what seemed to us every store. As is the custom among my people it was the time to discuss zombies. We talked about the various types of zombies and how to dispatch them. An amazing amount of vital knowledge was passed from him to me. Are zombies scarier than vampires and werewolves? How do they compare with back-to-school ads?

Have been keeping up with the world through the internet, books and certain TV shows. Arrested Development, House of Cards, and a new biography of Eisenhower have lighted my path as I ponder the meaning of life and politics. House of Cards really makes you feel the nobility of most political actions. It’s almost like reading the news. 

As we stumble through the desolate landscape of disquieting and tragic news here and there are glimmerings of hope and wonder. Our Senate passed a bill to lower the student loan rate and just narrowly averted the “nuclear solution”  concerning the use of the  filibuster. Young Mr, Snowden has applied to stay in that bastion of transparency, Russia. Good ole North Korea is upset about about Panama seizing it’s arms loaded ship in it’s Canal. On the home front the Dow reached a new mid-day high and the unemployment rate went down in California. Now if only those recent graduates could find employment with enough pay to comfortably repay their zillion dollar loans. Now you are probably wondering ,or not, about Neptune’s new moon and okra. Are the two related? Or course. Is the name Okra? It would be nice but I read that the moon would be named after one of the Sea God’s nasty children. As for the okra, i have cooked it with tomatoes. New discovery concerning farmers in Europe. Apparently manure was used for fertilizer some 8,000 years ago. Two other studies found that European Honeybees are bringing new viruses to the UK and the pathogen that caused the potato blight is still around. On top of that Monsanto has given up on trying to get the EU to accept GMOs.

Great news for those who were worried that the genes of pre-Columbian dogs had been completely replaced by the genes from European canines. It’s not true.In both North and South America there are dog breeds that contain the genes of Asian decent that came across the ice bridge or something like that. If that were not enough good news it has been found that dogs can see colors to the same extent that red-blue colorblind people can. Dogs can deceive people and other dogs. Now they have found that Chimpanzees and Orangutans have the ability to recollect distant happenings. Wow, is t almost Planet of the Apes time? Will they be aided by color-seeing dogs? Maybe these animals are evolving like the cylons from Battle Star Galactica.

News from space. Not too far from Earth, a gas giant exoplanet that is blue has been discovered. It is blue not from water but from blowing glass. How fast is it blowing? Faster than the  March wind in Lubbock, Texas . 7,000kmph and it is hotter than Death Valley-1,000c. Any creature that could live under those conditions would be tough, strong and probably paranoid. Just imagine a horde of blue, whirling, 1,000 degree zombie attacking the Earth. maybe the highly evolved dogs, chimps and orangs will save the day.

    This morning I awoke to find that the world’s problems have not been solved. Chaos is Egypt and Syria and some of China’s beaches have been slimed by a patch of algae the size of LA County. Poor China!  Pollution has cut life expectancy by five years in Northern China and the Lakers still need some kind of superhero for net season. Yet as I spend the morning in the company of my youngest grandchildren, I find rays of hope. Way way under the ice in Antarctica  there may be fish in Lake Vostok. And a naturalist in Australia has found a rare nocturnal parrot. Now those are exciting tidbits.  Also there was an article about the importance of the ability of humans to throw better than other primates. A chimp could never become a good pitcher. Now before we get too smug a chimp is many times stronger that a human but nanny nanny nanny they can’t throw well.

    A few other notes, Valley Fever which is caused by a fungus has become more common and I must stop and eat with the grandkids. Keep the faith and look always for the good and interesting.

What do these two books have in common? Probably nothing but have just read them as a way of keeping up with both historical and future events. How do I keep busy in retirement besides reading? This morning walked Manlypoodlekip and took a nap. And have just read that a group of men have been treed for several days by a pack of rare Sumatran Tigers. Now that raises a question, would it be better to be treed by rare tigers or those raised in Texas? And speaking of that what are the Lakers going to do next year? At least the Dodgers are looking pretty good. Should LA try to get the Manchester Soccer team? Who will be the next prime minister of Egypt? Should the US get more involved? And did you know that certain rare Lemurs listen to bird calls to warn them of approaching predators. Have not read anymore concerning Randy the red panda. How fleeting is fame.

One article stated that the last living creatures on earth would be some heat tolerant microbes. I think that will be at least several years from now. How would you like to be treed by giant snarling microbes even if they are very rare now. Have been watching a scientific TV series, EUReKA. There may be some fiction involved. It is easy for me to get trapped in the addiction of binge TV series watching. There are so many. I even watched a Dr Who from the fifties. Well on that note I close wishing everybody a happy June 7th and keep an eye out for zombies, tigers and giant heat resistant microbes.

>No not Mr. Rutschman! Escaped and free for a while, Randy the miniature Panda, was found on the grounds of the National Zoo. He may have been hunting for the cage of the female Red Panda or just protesting some action on the Hill. Was it the Supreme Court’s rulings? Did he hear a new theory that the hurricanes of the 1970s and 80s may have been less severe because of the air pollution and made stronger by the cleaner air over the US? Did he want to get in line early to get a ticket to see The Lone Ranger. It’s had to tell the motivation of this creature that is certainly not related to the new 200 billion years ago Knobby reptile that live in a desert region of the one massive land mass of the time. Could it have been a desire to see Under the Dome?

I have been camping on the beach and saw the almost super moon at 2;30 AM. Could not make it to 4AM. Even then it was beautiful. I wonder if Randy was watching? I read that Red Pandas are more closely related to raccoons than Giant Pandas. Maybe Randy was excited by a Chinese backed plan to build a new canal across Central America. Who knows and have a great end of June celebration which we could call Randy’s brief freedom.

The DOW is around 14,980 as I write this. That’s good for the teacher’s pension fun and what’s good for the fund is good for America. Now about Kobe, he is in a legal battle with an auction house as his mother is selling some of his old sports stuff. To me it is all sort of sad and it’s too bad this had to happen. Who is right? I don’t know. What if my mother tried to sell the basketball jersey I wore while playing for the 902nd Radar Squadron or the LACES jersey from 1986? Could they be worth more than a half million? Actually I lost them or worse so we will never know. Anyway Kobe it would be great if this were settled before Mother’s Day. Now to some really important health news. A study in Sweden found that infants whose parents cleaned their child’s pacifiers by sucking on them lead to a decrease in food allergies, asthma, and hay fever in the child. So glad that as an infant I was allowed to eat the good earth of Eastern New Mexico. That brings me to comment on the upcoming Lone Ranger movie.I grew up listening to the Lone Ranger on radio.I never pictured Tonto looking like Johnny Depp. That being said I look forward to the movie. Must see Iron Man 3 and the new Star Trek. I really like these art house productions. Enjoy the rain. Oh, one last thing, just read that the earth may have been totally covered with ice about 650,000,000 years ago. I hope this rain is not the start of a new such ice age.

Just got back from another walk through the hills of Eagle Rock with Manlypoodlekip. As I walked I began to ponder what happened to life on Mars. What if the intelligent life on Mars had become extremely germophobic and were all using a solution that killed 99.99% of the germs? Now as centuries passed that .01% evolved and combined all the traits of bacteria, fungus, virus and prions. And perhaps some even worse Mars stuff. The creatures burrow into the soil and grow and grow and finally all emerge on one day as a 200 pound mass of bulgy eyes, poison hairs and a giant mouth full of long teeth. Within minutes they have eaten everything on the planet and began to eat each other. A few giant creatures become bloated and float high into the atmosphere before exploding and destroying the CO2 layer. Now you know what I think about on the walks. Just read that some meat suppliers in China were passing rat meat off as mutton. That doesn’t bother me as I eat neither.

JCPenney is back! I feel that this is important for the cultural continuity of our great nation. It was bad enough when Kentucky Fried Chicken morphs into KFC. When I was young, sometime after the Big Bang, there were three department stores that just were. Wards, Sears, and JCPenneys, Wards has become extinct and Sears struggles and JCPenney became JCP. And the masses turned away. No more sales and a new CEO. You can imagine my joy today to see a Sunday ad for JCPenney and there were sales. On that positive note I leave you all to bask in the joy of a cool Sunday.