The Disappearing Ear

B.M. has a coffee mug with the famous self-portrait of Van Gogh on it. As the mug gets hot Van Gogh’s ear disappears. I tried to explain to him the disparity with the idea since Van Gogh painted his portrait from the side with his good ear. So, you would never see the bad ear actually disappearing as the mug suggests because it is never visible to begin with.

The bottom of the mug is just as funny, and it is even funnier that B.M. never thought to look on the bottom of it. On the bottom of the mug it says “The Unemployed Philosopher’s Guild…For best results use other side.”

Toes and Chicken Pot Pies

Last night I dreamed I was in China with my boss. We were at a dinner party and for some reason he was giving people a scientific explanation about my toes sticking through the ends of my socks. I am not quite sure what this means exactly. I have heard that dreams hold meanings to our unconscious minds. I wonder if it means that I shouldn’t eat chicken pot pies for dinner anymore. Maybe it means I need to cut my toenails. Or perhaps it means something more. Maybe it is the secret of life revealed to me in a dream and I have only to figure it out to unlock its secrets and save humanity as we know it! Probably not. I am going with the chicken pot pie theory.

Ponkapog Papers

Last night I was reading the “Ponkapog Papers” by Thomas Bailey Aldrich. The section I am reading at the moment is called “Leaves on a Notebook,” and could only be what I would characterize as an early blog. It is random comments and musings on life written presumably on scraps of paper as Mr. Aldrich traveled through his every day existence. I am fascinated by this literay work because of its parallelism with my own mind or at least how I am striving to wire my own mind…catching everything, experiencing life at every turn, and writing it down in random spurts that only make sense to me.

Read the "Ponkapog Papers" on-line.

JAVA in German

I wonder if there are programming languages written in other languages, like JAVA in German. You know where the “for loops” would be “fuer loops” instead. I think it would be awfully conceited of us to make everyone learn English in order to be able to use and understand certain programming languages. On the flip side it would make for a more standard program. There would be no compatibility issues or conversions needed between different programs. On the flip side of that it might be no different than going between different programming languages like JAVA to C++. I guess the world may never know how many licks it takes to get to the Tootsie Roll center of a Tootsie Pop. Or at least I won’t because I have no ambition to pursue this idea further than here in this blog.

George in Any Language

I found out today that B.M.'s middle name is “Jurgis” [Pronounced Yur-gis]. I immediately found this fascinating and asked him if it meant “George.” He told me that it did in fact mean “George” in Lithuanian, and was amazed that I knew this. I told him that it sounded like the Greek form of “George” which is “Georgios” [Pronounced Yee-or-gos]. This happens to be my brother-in-law’s name, so I am intimately familiar with its pronunciation.

Margarita

Did you know that "margarita" is Spanish for "Daisy"? When you think about it it makes perfect sense. A margarita has a yellow-green center of liquid framed by a white circle of salt. I imagine that if you looked straight down at it that it would look just like a daisy.

Pocket Hair Live in Concert!

I have an addition to the Pocket Hair post. I was discussing the reality of starting a band with B.M. and I.S., and I realized that I would need musicians, singers, and song writers first. Basically I have none of the components to start a band at the moment except for the name. I started to imagine a movie script where a so-called band gets touted as the next big thing. They do all sorts of promotional stunts with them, like photo shoots, magazine spreads, picture signings, and talk shows, but the band never actually releases any music. The phenomenon would be purely spread by word of mouth and accentuated by the fact that everybody wants to be in the “KNOW” crowd. After a little while the band could break up, citing irreconcilable differences. They could then start the circus over again several years later with a reunion tour or something.

The Bald Monks

I noticed last night that my kneecaps are completely bald. The hair runs down my thigh, abruptly stops at my kneecap, and then picks up again on the other side. I assume that can be attributed to my pants rubbing on that same spot day after day, but it just struck me as odd. I would say it was more how the scene looked like two monks kneeling at the end of my legs with their heads bowed in prayer.

Pocket Hair?

Yesterday I was sitting at my desk and I noticed that my pocket had hair growing out of it. Well, it wasn’t real hair, but it looked like hair nonetheless. It was actually the frayed edges of the fabric on the inside of the pocket starting to stick up out of the pocket. It was so intriguing that I shared the notion with B.M. He was so intrigued that he insisted that I let him take a picture of it. This sparked off a whole conversation at lunch, and I ended up wondering if anyone else had seen the same phenomenon and thought it looked like pocket hair. I further wondered if anyone had a website about it. So, for fun I looked up http://www.pockethair.com/. Amazingly enough it wasn’t taken yet. I started to ponder the possibilities. That would be a great name for a blog spot. It could contain my random thoughts about nothing important. I.S. suggested that I could start a band called Pocket Hair, and that could be our official website. Can you imagine what an untapped goldmine that is?

So, here I am setting up the above mentioned blog spot. And to whatever weary traveler that might happen to come across this blog, I bid you welcome. I consider it a success if it does nothing more than entertain you for a few minutes.