More little scraps #11

1.    "If you don't plant flowers in your garden of life, you will
       forever be pulling weeds."    (Anon)

2.    A quite adequately constructed young woman was giving
       testimony to the value of a certain television infomercial exercise
       regime when she announced;    "My booty went up a level."

       Now I'm just a simple old geezer who does his best to keep up
       with linguistic evolution.
       Please correct me if I am wrong.
       Does this mean that if she overindulges in all this Zumba
       prancing business then there is some risk that one day she will
       wake up and discover that her arse is somewhere up around
       where her ears used to be?

3.    News item on Christmas Day;
       
       " A suicide bomber in a horse and cart has killed 8 people and
         injured 5 others in the Afghan city of Kandehar."

       Nowhere, not in any media, did I note any concern being
       expressed for the fate of the horse.
       Despicable humans.

4.    "Sometimes you just need to start again in order to fly"
         (Alicia Keys)

5.    And to provide just a little retinal warmth for my frozen
       Northern Hemispheric friends;

Tropical shade 1

 

Tropical shade 2

With lots of epiphytic ferns

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More little scraps #9

1.   Overheard;
     "Happiness is somewhere on the scale between boredom and
      fear"

      I personally do not think it is possible to define happiness in a
      nutshell.  Maybe the closest is Martin Seligman's assessment
      of what is required;

     "Something to do.
      Someone to love, and
      Something to look forward to."

2.   Mrs GOF has three watches. (don't ask me why….it's secret
      womens business)   She doesn't wear them all at the same
      time which is a comforting indicator of her sanity.
      None of them cost more than $20.
      The $14 one, which she likes the best, recently required a
       new watchband which cost $22 and a replacement battery
       ($18).

      Then she lamented;
      
      "Why, when I own three watches, do I keep running out of
       time".

3.  "Odors released by stressed rats produce opoid analgesia
       in unstressed rats"
       (M.S. Fanselow "Behavioural Neuroscience" 1985)

       I just thought your life would be more complete with this
       knowledge.

4.   A caller on talkback radio;
      " Why do we destroy high-grade Earth, in exchange for low-
         grade ore."

     
5.  "Ugliness has more going for it than beauty……it endures."
       (Charlotte Gainsbourg)

6.   My unenviable mathematical credentials have already been
      established here in The Bucket.
      However, some simple arithmetic, after recent events
      around the world, make it clear that probably at least one
      person out of my Vox neighbourhood has had sex with Tiger
      Woods.
      GOF is immune from making any declaration, either because
      he didn't, or the fine print in his $5 million settlement prevent
      him from speaking out.

     Anyone else care to make any admissions?
 

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More scraps #9

1. Australian Hearing Organisation research reveals that
    when older people are fitted with a hearing aid they have
    a 12% better love life.

    Old Gof has a couple of questions;
   
     1.  What is "love life"?   Can someone jog my memory please.
     2. What sort of apparatus was used to measure the 12 percent?

2. "Survival of the fittest must be replaced by survival of the
     wisest"    (Jonas Salk…polio vaccine dude)

3.  Roger Bacon, 13th century English scientist proposed;

     "the breath of young virgins could replenish the vital essence
      of old men, and I recommend spending time in their company".

      Nice try Roger.  But just exactly how did this idea go down with
      Mrs Bacon?

      I can feel a unique scamming business
      opportunity coming on. 
      Would you like to be my new joint venture partner?
 
      We can sell bottled virgin breath.

      You can find the virgins.

      I'll get my hands on all the bottles.

     Yep, you read it right,
     The bottle job will suit me just fine thank you.
     

4. GOF's Human Stupidity Award for the month.

    A Queensland banana grower is planning to package
    individual bananas in specially shaped plastic punnets
    for export. 
    This will replace the standard 13kg biodegradable carton.

    Like the world does not have enough pieces of plastic littering
    the oceans and landfill sites already.
 

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Little scraps # 4

27

1. Apparently Thomas Edison at age 40 (ish) proposed to his 16 year old second wife by tapping the request out on her hand in Morse Code.

(No comment, I will only get into trouble.)

2. The retail price of one litre of milk is currently $1.85.
My supermarket is just around the corner from the milk factory so freight should not be a contributor to pricing.
The dairy farmer gets paid 45 cents per litre.

3. Famous last words;
    "When anyone asks me how I can best describe my experiences in nearly 40 years at sea, I merely say, uneventful.
Of course there have been winter gales and storms and fog and the like.  But in all my experience I have never been in any accident……or any sort worth speaking about.
I have seen but one vessel in distress in all my years at sea.
I never saw a wreck, and never have been wrecked, nor was I ever in any predicament that threatened to end in disaster of any sort".
(E.J.Smith, 1907, Captain of the RMS Titanic)

4. Sex on TV is fine.
    Just so long as you don't fall off.

5. "Diatomaceous earth consists of fossilized remains of diatoms, a type of hard-shelled algae. It is used as a filtration aid, as a mild abrasive, as a mechanical insecticide, as an absorbent for liquids, as cat litter, as an activator in blood clotting studies, and as a component of dynamite. As it is also heat-resistant, it can be used as a thermal insulator."

(Gimme, gimme, gimme…..Where is the Diatomaceous Earth Shop?  I want to keep warm this winter, filter my brewed coffee, kill some insects, and explode a few cats.)

6. "And down came a spider,
     And sat down beside her"

    And, blow me down if Little Miss Muffett did not immediately recognise a business opportunity producing food a little more enticing and nutritionally sustaining than curds and whey, then bugger off to Okinawa and open a Pizzeria.

Spider pizza

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Little scraps #2

1. "You are here to enrich the world, and you impoverish yourself if you forget that errand"          (Woodrow Wilson)

2.   idiomatic      Ugandan washing machine
      tittilate           Late onset of puberty

3. Coles supermarkets sell 425 gram net wt. cans of
"Baked Beans".  By their own fine print admission, each can contains 179 grams of baked beans.  The remainder is "sauce". (primarily water)

I think there used to be a commodity known as commercial ethics.
It incorporated something my Mum and Dad would have called  "honesty", from an era when the corner grocer had large hanging scales for all to read the correct weight.
I wonder if the ethics of commerce will ever make a comeback.

4. Yet another wonderful, genuine, useful and affordable service is being offered to SMS users in Australia.  Text the name of you and your partner to get the best possible name for your first offspring;

Gof

Elle

Text;     GOF AND ELLE 
 

Reply;  BLOODY MIRACLE GOF 
(not good, but I'll accept it if she does)

5.  In rural Papua New Guinea where birth certificates were not issued, the standard method of determining whether or not a child was old enough to start school was for it to reach one hand over its head and touch the opposite shoulder.  This manouvre supposedly cannot be achieved by children younger than 6 years of age.

And, as I feel like being a fount of indispensible knowledge today, apparently it is also impossible to lick your elbow. 
I wonder who the unemployed dingbat was who discovered that, and what other anatomical truths he found out during the same journey of discovery.
It is an assumption which failed to take into consideration those of us who are endowed with extraordinarily long tongues.

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Little scraps from the bucket

1.  "A positive attitude may not solve all your problems, but it will    
      annoy enough people to make it worth the effort."
      (Herm Albright quotes 1876-1944)

2.  Overheard at the Nativity;  "Oh look, it's a girl".
     (Tim Brooke-Taylor exploring interesting alternatives.)

3.  "Don't just rely on your beliefs.
     Everything is more complex than it seems,
     and being passionate doesn't make you right".
     (Alan Alda……who incidentally GOF admires greatly)

4.  "Raising 34 children, and managing 12 wives
      takes some doing."
      (understatement from Mr Kagul Koroka, Governor of
       Papua New Guinea's Western Highlands.)

5.   Tom Lehrer (the God of Gofism) song lyrics from
       "When you are old and gray"

      An awful debility,
      A lessened utility.
      A loss of mobility,
      Is a strong possibility.
      In all probability,
      I'll lose my virility,
      And you, your fertility
      And desireability,
      And this liability
      Of total sterility,
      Will lead to hostility,
      And a sense of futility,
      For we'll soon reach senility
      And lose the ability.

6.   "Times have changed in Australia so we thought it was time
       to change our bottles to a brand new look, but we know its the
       water you love"

       (Marketing bullshit to perpetuate the biggest commercial mass
       hoodwinking operation of my lifetime.  Aimed at those who
       are gullible enough to pay $4 litre for something which is
       available free of charge from any public water supply in
       Australia)

7.   Word definitions from Graeme Garden and friends;

      colonnade;    a fizzy enema       
      antelope;      to run off with your mother's sister.

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