15 Fireworks Thoughts and Questions for July Fourth

1. Do you like Jimmy Walker, but don’t 

remember why?

2. If you can’t afford fireworks, do you push your fingers into your eyes until you see the lights flash?

3. You know exactly how large a bandage you will need this year.

4. Do you think your eyebrows will ever grow back?

5. You know from personal experience never to buy another explosive duck decoy for your retriever.

6. Did you take out a payday loan to buy fireworks?

7. Do you try to reuse the sparklers from last year?

8. Have you ever bought a finale fireworks rocket called Mules Across America?

9. Did your bottle rockets come with last rites instructions?

10. The Emergency Room in your county waives the deductible for visits on July Fourth. 

11. Does your plastic surgeon offer a special Fourth of July wrinkle remover called BoomTox?

12. Do you include your fireworks in a sensible weight loss program?

13. Your friends now call you Lefty since last Fourth of July?

14. Did you buy your fireworks from a South American Mining Company?

15. Old firecrackers that just lay there and don't go off are called Baby Boomers.

Contact: 

Bob Simpson

Largo, Florida

bobsimpson1947@yahoo.com

Kitty Ma, Pine Needles, and John Denver

PINELLAS, Point of Pines in Spanish. If you speak Spanish you know the two words. If you don’t speak Spanish, you don’t need to know them. You will probably mispronounce them in a way that will get you slapped, killed, or happily engaged to a school lunchroom employee in Miami.

Like our Pinellas pine needles, aloft or fallen, I have a point and we’ll get to it sometime soon, maybe.

Kitty Ma McLeod was a middle-class, Victorian woman. She brought up 3 boys, Norman, Hamilton, and my grandfather Robyn. Kitty Ma’s nimble, bony fingers, the blue veined mittens, fashioned hot plate trivets, coiled from humble pine needles and raffia. It was magic.

There was a folk craft renaissance of pine needle coiling in the early 1900’s. Many well-dressed, corseted ladies took classes. The art was already ancient, even when Kitty Ma was young. South Carolina barrier island folk made sweet grass coiled baskets years before the trussed-up ladies of the 1900’s appropriated the art.

Even the late John Denver wove pine needle baskets whenever he was on the road. He carried two guitar cases, one for his guitar and the other filled with crisp, golden brown pine needles and Madagascar raffia. At least that’s what he told the Customs Man.

   

         Lubbock, Texas airport, early 1967

A young John Denver is on board a commercial flight to Montana. He has pine needles and raffia with him, busily creating a new basket. Sitting in a window seat waiting for his plane to take off, John notices a Texas thunderstorm coming.

Rain is pelting the window. He wistfully watched for a while and returns to weaving his pine needle basket. Then it comes to him. Finally, we have arrived, to the point of all of this:

Mr. Denver grins, leans back, and sings, 

“I’m weaving on a wet plane.”

Did you think that Peter Paul and Mary wrote that song?

Well, you were wrong.

Here is a subject for comments. Who do you like the best?

John Denver
Denver Pyle
or 
Gomer Pyle?

Contact: 

Bob Simpson

Largo, Florida

bobsimpson1947@yahoo.com

10 Distinct Thoughts on Boogers

Hey Lincoln, did the sculptor give you any arms or hands?
I need somebody to scratch my nose.

This is not an all-inclusive-everything-you-ever-wanted-to-know-about Boogers report. Check with the Pueblo Documents Distribution Center in Pueblo Colorado. http://pueblo.gpo.gov/  There are several government studies available there on Boogers. Take your pick. What … you didn’t think I would use that joke?

1. I woke up this morning with a firmly packed booger on my hand, specifically on my thumb, specifically on my right thumb.

2. Normally, I would rise from bed and deliver the booger to the toilet bowl since I go that way anyway. This morning I was surprised to find no urgency to go anywhere. “But I have this booger on my finger and I can’t just flick it over the bed covers and onto the floor, even if I am a man.”

3. Mr. Booger appeared when I sneezed. This was not one of those honkers from a Cold or the Flu, the ones that leave a large yellow jellyfish quivering in your cupped palms.

4. I live in Florida, which is the finest state to reside to remain Booger-free. We have high humidity so boogers don’t form easily. Other states with low humidity, dust storms, or air pollution are where the boogers do grow. That was a 1955 Hank Aring country/folk song: I’m Agoing Out West Where the Boogers Do Grow.

I wonder why my
cell phone is so sticky.

5. My nose is an older schnoz, filled with coarse jungle overgrowth. When it gets cold in Florida and we crank up the heat, then we experience scattered boogers with a chance of intermittent snoring throughout the early morning hours.

6. The first evidence of booger-forming people appeared in the Fertile Crescent. They were hunter/gatherers … and pickers. Don’t mix this up with the Fertile Croissant. That was one busy French tart that visited every lonely soldier just outside of Waterloo in 1815. After contact with this woman, the soldiers had trouble passing water in the loo.

7. Whales never form boogers because they live in the watery environment of the ocean. Their blowholes are damper than a burka in hay fever season.   

8. The Grapes of Wrath original title was Dust Bowl Booger Pickers. “Once we get to Cal-aye-fornee, we can pick our boogers in public.”

9. The IRRC, Institute for the Recovery and Reuse of Cocaine, is investigating the harvesting and repurposing of cocaine-laden boogers. The Booger Fairy will visit California mansions with a burlap bag and a pair of stainless steel forceps for late night collections.

10. Some day, office bathrooms will not be the only sanctuary where a Booger Hoarder can relax. He, and yes there are also female Booger Hoarders, has a favorite stall in the office bathroom, where he displays his boogers on the inside panel of the stall door.

A collection can swell to over 350 boogers if the building cleaning crew takes the attitude, “Whoa. That’s not our job to remove and clean nasal production artwork on a stall door.”
I give you permission to translate that last quote into whatever oppressed people’s language you think is appropriate.

 

Summary

I hope you enjoyed this bit of nosetalgia.

Until that liberating day when a picker can come out from behind his newspaper or bathroom stall, polite society will continue to look down or more likely look up into the boulder-laden noses of these nares-do-wells.

Contact: 

Bob Simpson

Largo, Florida

bobsimpson1947@yahoo.com

Do you have a booger story to share? Add a comment. The grosser, the better. 

8 Rules for Pancakes

Wilford Brimley's Breakfast
for Bronco Busters

Attention:

Ladles and Griddlemen

There  are at least eight rules listed below for pancake enjoyment. 

I didn't give them numbers because I didn't feel like it. If you would like to print this and add numbers to your own personal copy, then I think you should do just that.

They are called hot cakes. Please ... Serve them HOT.

Pancake Eaters: Have some respect. Be at the table, buttering and syruping up those flapjacks, within one minute of them leaving the cast iron skillet.

Serve real butter at room temperature, but melt the butter if you are eating pancakes in an igloo. Never offer margarine with pancakes. Only salted real butter is allowed.

Place crisp warm endless bacon within reach of the pancakes.

Within Six Degrees of  a
Normal Hemoglobin A1C

If you serve turkey bacon, then you might as well supply margarine or “I can’t Believe It’s Not Crap.”

Pouring a small amount of real maple syrup into a bottle of Karo syrup is not acceptable. Either pony up for the 100% maple syrup or use some good old sugar cane syrup on those flapjacks.

Syrup with butter flavor is an abomination and classed together with other combo foods such as hot dogs with injected cheese sauce or peanut butter and jelly occupying the same jar. Folks that use these products often will order pizza with pineapple topping. These same people would want to know what wine to serve with little barbecue sausages.

Pancake Theory One from a 1994 epiphany at the IHOP on Dale Mabry Ave. in Tampa Florida. Whatever you do in the first thirty minutes after eating pancakes is what you end up doing for the rest of the day. Normally the writer would explain what IHOP means but if you don’t know, then you should be toasting generic-brand frozen waffles … alone.

Do not discard pancakes in the backyard as if they were crusts of old bread. It’s disturbing to have to watch fat squirrels in the morning monitoring their blood sugar levels.

If you have questions or want to add your own rules or favorite pancake story, add a comment. I would like to hear from you.

I promise not to argue or belittle you. That's what my wife is for. Just kidding Dear. 


Contact: 
Bob Simpson
Largo, Florida
bobsimpson1947@yahoo.com

Love Through Love

He said:

 

You are the prettiest girl I have ever seen in my life.

 And, you’re smart too.
 

It’s different with you. I really do like you.
 

I love you.
 

I love you a lot.
 

I will love you for a long time.
 

I will love you forever.
 

I love you.

 

Yeah, me too.
 

Back at you.
 

Dittos.
 

Yes, I still love you.
 

I’m pretty sure that I love you.
 

I love you … unless something better comes along.
 

No, you’re not getting fat.
 

It’s just more for me to love.
 

You want to go jogging or work out with me?
 

I think you would feel better if you actually got up off the couch every once in a while.
 

I’m just concerned about your health.
 

Do you want me to take over paying your life insurance premiums for you?
 

I need some time alone to think some things through.
 

No, it’s not you. It’s me.
 

Maybe we should start seeing other people.
 

I met someone.
 

She’s really nice. She's a lot like you.
 

We should both tell the kids together.
 

Will you be all right on your own?
 

I got your attorney’s letter. I don’t think it’s such a fair deal for me.
 

Yes judge, we are totally irreconcilable with no hope of salvaging the marriage.
 

I know. I know. I know we’ve always spent Christmas with the kids, but you know my girlfriend has a family that we need to spend some time with too.
 

Yes, I mailed the alimony. I will check my bank statements again.

I don't know what I ever saw in you.

Yeah, well ok then, I hate you too.

I will hate you forever.

 

I will come back to haunt you after I die.
 

I hope you die first.
 

I hope you die real soon.
 

I’ll be right there as soon as I can get a flight. Are you sure our son is in stable condition?
 

I’m sorry to hear of your mother’s passing. She was a good woman.
 

It’s good to hear from you.
 

I was thinking about you the other day.
 

Yeah, I had a little health scare last week. Everything is fine now. My heart’s doing better but I have to watch what I eat and start exercising. I remember that my portion control was always a concern of yours.
 

Thanks for the card about my Dad. You’re right. He was a good man. I miss him.
 

Yeah, I was kinda stupid about us, wasn’t I?
 

You’re being kind to say that, but it really was entirely my fault. I’m sorry.
 

Sure, that would be nice if we met for coffee.
 

Yeah, I miss you too.
 

We did have some good times.

Finally, 

he said:  

You know … Nobody else will have

my sorry ass … so I’ll always love you forever. 

Have you seen my glasses? 

If you have questions or want to add a remark, please leave a comment. I would love to hear from you. I promise not to argue or belittle you. That's what my wife is for. Just kidding, Dear. 

Contact: Bob Simpson
Largo, Florida
bobsimpson1947@yahoo.com
 

Why the outrage over Ferguson?

I haven't kept up with the news, what with all the TV shows I have recorded and need to watch. I did hear something about the Ferguson riots and the outrage over Ferguson.

I can't understand why there has to be rioting, looting, and protests just because of the Ferguson decision.

Ferguson decided to retire from CBS sometime in December 2014. He wasn't fired. 

Liza Minnelli look-alike, Craig Ferguson is leaving CBS 

He is leaving on good terms with CBS. There is no animosity between CBS executives and Craig Ferguson, the late late night talk show host

Craig Ferguson epitomizes a typical legal immigrant's progression through the system to ultimately become a United States Citizen.

I beg of you. Please stop the riots and looting. This man has done nothing wrong. He overcame a life of addiction to go on to host a major television network show for ten years.

Please, can't we all just get along? Let's start today to help return to a country of love and compassion for all. 

Don't make this another Conan O'Brien-Jay Leno thing. Haven't we learned from our mistakes? WWJD? (What would Johnny Do?)

Let's make it a great day for America. 

If you have questions or want to add a remark, please leave a comment. I would love to hear from you. I promise not to argue or belittle you. That's what my wife is for. Just kidding, Dear. 

Contact: 

Bob Simpson

Largo, Florida

bobsimpson1947@yahoo.com

Stephen Hawking says “There is no Cod”

Cod is Dead ... and Deep Fried

British physicist Steven Hawking has claimed that “There is no Cod.” He believes that "science offers the most reasonable explanation" for Long John Silver's decision to remove Cod from their menu.

Hawking suffers from a motor neuron disease similar to ALS, Acute Limey Syndrome. He’s English you know. Part of the treatment for ALS is a daily serving of fish.

Hawking does believe, however, that "Tartar Sauce is Absolutely Divine," an allusion to a possible deity-like entity capable of producing that tasty condiment so necessary for the enjoyment of a nice piece of fish.

Professor Hawking announced that due to the removal of Cod from the menu, he will “Never again set foot in a Long John Silver’s restaurant.”

Stephen Hawking divorced his first wife, who took care of him and guided his wheelchair everywhere. When asked why he divorced her, he said, “She was just too pushy."

Bob Simpson

Bobsimpson1947@yahoo.com