Friday head gravel

Happy Friday.  Rattling around upstairs:

Interested as I am in politics and government, the last week or two before an election disgust me.  They have since 1988.  You can wear out your wrist flipping away from all the attack ads, on TV and radio.  Thank God for XM.

Speaking of XM and politics, yet again, I heard Barack Obama interviewed this morning on On Point.  He's very impressive, obviously, in a lot of ways, but here's my favorite two:  1) Replying to the observation that he's the political rock star of the moment, he says, "Don't put your faith in that.  We live in a celebrity culture.  I hope any appeal anyone is assigning to me has at least something to do with what I stand for."  2) He says he's learned in the past year that the "divisiveness" prevalent in politics is an inaccurate magnification of what's actually happening in the US.  People are more together on many things than you might think, and gravitate toward the center.  That feels pretty good to me, because I'm tired of you-hate-me-I-hate-you "debates."

Missouri teacher caught smoking pot on school grounds.  A second grade teacher thought this was a good plan.  I don't know which one is more full of stupid, the teacher or the parent who said she didn't think it was a big deal.  Makes my home state look even worse.

I like using the Google on the Internets too.  Thanks, Al, for inventing it.  Whoops, about time for the lunch.

U.S. exercise guidelines coming in 2008.  Good.  Opening line should be: put down the fork, get up, move.

I'm always interested in funny or unique turns of phrases or colloquial sayings.  My Dad had a million of them.  When he was content, he was "like a shoat in a corn crib."  When he was prepared, he was "Johnny at the rat hole."  Someone new to something was usually "greener than goose shit at grass time."  His favorite foods were "so good it'll crawl up in your mouth."  I miss hearing that from him, of course, and miss colorful (I don't mean profane) language in general.  Now, all you hear about is "transparency."

Swing and a long one.

Comments

[John Wagner]

I'm getting about 10 calls a day ... pre-recorded messages telling me to vote for this candidate or the other. It really drives me crazy.

One of the things I get to laugh at now is my kids' lack of understanding when people use colloquialisms. My daughter's band director is always telling them not to "phone in" their performance ... she had no idea what that meant. :)

My dad used to always use the phrase "is your dobber (or perhaps it's dauber) down?" when asking if you were feeling a little depressed. I've used it before and people thought it as nasty.

[Mason Cole]

Those are good ones. Some of the more, uh, woodsy kind of my native state would say on a hot day that it was time to be "a-huntin' up some shade." Or if you had no common sense, you were "all ate up with stupid."