BRAINPAN LEAKAGE

Well, maybe not “carnage” so much, but our Red Bud tree took some damage from the freak March snowstorm that struck overnight here in Saint Louis. Only a few inches of the white stuff fell, but it was in a very, very short period of time. Plus, it was the heavy, wet snow that tends to weigh things down.

It was around 4:45 – 5:00 AM when I heard the sickening sound of cracking lumber. In my half sleep I actually felt a bit of panic because there used to be a large oak right outside our back door, and it had been dying for years. I finally had it taken out summer before last, but in the past it had dropped limbs and exacted a toll on both our house and that of our neighbor.  However, up until I had it removed I had harbored a fear that it would some day send one of the larger branches through our roof, and if that happened, our bedroom would be right in the damage path.  Still in a semi-dream state, this was my muddied brain’s first thought. I hooked an arm around E K as I rolled to the right, but before I could push her off the bed and out of harm’s way, I heard the heavy thud of the branch hitting the ground outside instead of coming through the roof on top of us. My brain woke just a bit more and in that instant I remembered that the oak was gone.

Good thing too…

E K was still asleep, but if I had pushed her off onto the floor, I’m betting she wouldn’t have been for long.

I crawled out of the bed and looked out the back window of our bedroom. Snow covered the landscape in an uneven, spotty blanket. And there, in the middle of the yard, was a major branch of our Red Bud tree. At that point, I pretty much sighed and then muttered, “This ain’t good.”

Since it had been in the 70’s and 80’s for the past couple of weeks, trees were budding and sprouts were sprouting. If you are familiar with the Red Bud, you know that in the spring it is covered with tiny reddish-magenta flowering buds for a week or two. Unfortunately, those miniscule flowers formed enough of a lattice to capture and hold the snow, making the weight on the branch too much to bear.

This particular Red Bud was one I had given E K as a birthday gift around 15 years ago. Actually, I gave her a stake with an orange flag on it and told her to go stick it in the yard wherever she wanted a tree. And, no, before you ask, I didn’t make her water it or anything … Two days after she stabbed it into the ground like a Van Helsing disciple offing a vampire – (and she looked pretty damn hot doing it too, as I recall) – the nursery arrived while we were at work and planted the tree she had been telling me she wanted.

At any rate, as promised in my “tweets” early this morning, below are a couple of pictures of the tree…

This would be the view from our bedroom window on the second floor. It was taken by E K early this morning while it was still extremely overcast, so I had to adjust it a bit in Photoshop. (click photo to enlarge.)

From the back of the yard, later in the day. As you can see, the snow disappeared within a matter of a scant few hours, and the sun was brightly shining. What isn’t obvious is that the ground is saturated (it rained all day before the snow arrived) and there is even standing water in the depressions throughout the lawn. (click photo to enlarge)

There you have it. Our backyard carnage. Looks like I am going to be pulling out the chainsaw in the next day or two before I have to jet off to Nebraska.

More to come…

Murv

Sorry to steal one of your catch phrases, Emeril, but let’s be honest. That one  has been around a long time…

But let’s not get into the BAM thing… Let’s talk about something else. You see, there are all manner of old legends about vampires. Things like they can’t come into a home unless invited… No reflections in mirrors… Garlic repels them… Etc… One of my favorites is that they are afflicted with debilitating Vampire O C D – as in, if you are about to be attacked by one all you need do is empty a box of matches on the floor in front of them and they will be compelled to stop, pick them up and count them before they do anything else, leaving you plenty of time to escape… In my mind, that’s kind of handy to know.

But, what does this have to do with rocket science? Well, nothing much really. But, you know how I am… We’ll be getting back around to the idea of Bloodsucker O C D eventually…

We just have to take a detour first… i.e. Follow that chicken!

So, let’s talk about rocket science, or more specifically, paperclips… Yeah, those twisty little pieces of wire that come in boxes and that made someone very, very wealthy.

Paperclips, as a rule, aren’t particularly hard to operate. In fact, they are probably one of the simplest devices known to man. A bent piece of wire with just enough spring to it in order to hold pieces of paper, or even all manner of other stuff together in one place. A box of them is relatively cheap, and they come in many shapes (the picture at top left being the classic standard, of course), sizes, coatings, and even a huge variety of eye-catching colors.

If for some odd reason you run out of toothpicks, you can even unbend one of these little beauties and use it thus – although, I suspect every dentist, hygienist, and dental assistant out there is cringing at that suggestion. Therefore, I do NOT suggest that you do so. I will merely state that, in a pinch, I have done this with a modicum of success, but admit that I have been lucky not to damage my teeth or gums in the process. So, the long and short of it is: Don’t imitate the Murv. (There… that’s my disclaimer.)

But, let’s face it, the paperclip has almost limitless uses. Give it a quick twist and you now have a rigid metal stick to use for mixing two part epoxy adhesive. The mixing device will even double as an applicator. How cool is that?

Years ago – maybe more like eons ago – I personally used a piece clipped from a paperclip to make an impromptu jumper strap for a circuit board. I even used pieces of paperclips to repair traces on a power supply PCB. What amazing versatility that little wire pretzel has up its proverbial sleeve.

And, if you go all MacGyver, well hey, the paperclip suddenly gains even more uses. Lock pick, impromptu fuse pin for a grenade, poison dart, miniature marshmallow roasting stick for a mouse…

I mean, let’s face it, the uses are simply too many to recount here in a single blog entry.

But, let’s get back to the originally intended use of the humble paperclip, that being, of course, keeping a bundle of papers, documents, or what have you, together in an organized fashion. This is exactly what I use them for on a regular basis.

Regular as in, for instance, a recent trip I made to the local licensing office…

You see, Missouri, in response to the terrorist attacks of 9/11 and in accordance with the, IMHO, horribly misnamed “Patriot Act”, now requires a bit of a “Prove Who You Are” song and dance whenever you are renewing your license. Never mind the fact that licensing offices here are privately owned and contracted, and that the person behind the counter is under no obligation whatsoever to prove to us who THEY are prior to us handing over our sensitive personal documents for their inspection and cockeyed scrutiny… But, I digress… I do understand the why’s and wherefore’s behind proving who you are, but sometimes it can get just a bit extreme – especially when you are renewing a license and they can look in the database and easily see that you have done so 10 times before… But, I’m still on the digressing train aren’t I?

You see, I did my duty. I went to the licensing office on the particular morning in question to have my Driver’s License renewed. Trying to be organized and on top of things, I went over the renewal notice with a fine toothed comb, and saw to it that I had gathered together all of the forms of ID, Proof of Residence, Bodily Fluid Samples, Household Paperwork, and what all that they insisted I have… Well, not really bodily fluid samples… But, a healthy stack of paperwork nonetheless… Voter ID card, Current License, Birth Certificate, and on, and on… In keeping with my desire to be organized and an easy person to work with, I paper clipped all of these documents together and headed out for the local license office which is about a mile from my house.

Now, being the early bird that I am, I arrived 5 minutes before they opened. But, obviously I wasn’t alone in this because I was number 2 in line, and before they every got around to opening the doors, there were several more folks queued up behind me. A couple of minutes after nine they opened up. I’m not going to complain about this because their clock may have been off. I can live with that. Had it been 10 or 15 minutes after the hour, well, that would have been a different story, but hey, I know how clocks can be and a couple of minutes one way or the other isn’t a huge deal…

But, now it gets fun…

We were more or less “ordered” in the door by one of the employees, who treated us as if we were cattle off to the slaughter – This was nothing new to me. Anything involving government bureaucracy, be it local, state, or federal, ends up labeling the general populous as “sheeple” and those working for the government seem to think they are above it all. What they don’t  seem to be able to get through their thick skulls is that they are even bigger sheeple than the folks they are ordering around. I’d love to be standing there when this dawns upon them, because I’m sure the ensuing brain meltdown will be pretty spectacular to watch.

Yes, as insensitive as it may seem,  I admit that I actually take great solace in the fact that I realize a good number of these jackasses are nothing more than mindless drones wading through an utterly meaningless existence as the life is sucked out of them by their jobs; and that the only way they can feel in control of their own destiny is to act self-important. The evidence of this phenomenon is provided by their increasingly nasty demeanors, lack of manners, and in some cases even  overt displays of horribly sub-par intelligence due to brain atrophy.

But again, I digress… Well sorta… You’ll see in a minute…

Still, I am certain you are wondering from whence do I draw my conclusion, even with the preponderance of evidence listed above… Why, the humble and pure paperclip, of course…

On this particular day I followed the barked instructions of the door drone and seated myself in the waiting area to the left. The frowning young female – I have absolutely no intention of using the honorific “lady” in conjunction with this bag of negativity – behind the counter watched as I took my seat, waited for me to lean back and get as comfortable as I possibly could on the hard plastic, then immediately called me to the counter. I wasn’t pleased that she didn’t bother to just tell me to come on over before I sat down, but I’m not a lazy person so it isn’t like the added motion hurt me at all… But, still…Wouldn’t it have been just as easy to call me over before I sat down?

I got up from my seat, electing to keep my mouth shut and not to point out to her the overall rudeness of what she had just done. I went over to the counter and handed her my paperwork as I withdrew my checkbook from my pocket.

She looked at the paper clipped bundle, rolled her eyes, snorted, then spat the angry demand, “Where’s your ID?” At least, I think that is what she said. It actually came out of her mouth as something on the order of “Wheb’snerdee!”

She didn’t really sound at all like she had a longstanding speech impediment, nor was she displaying any other symptoms of a stroke in progress. Therefore, I could only assume the foreign language she was speaking was due to the fact that either she 1) had her mouth full of chewing gum, 2)  had consumed shellfish for breakfast and was going into anaphylactic shock, therefore her tongue was swelling, or maybe even 3) her tongue was  simply getting stuck to her teeth and preventing entire syllables from exiting her mouth in synchronization with her frown. Hell, for all I knew it could be all of the above. Unfortunately, it fell to me to translate on my own because even though my towel was in the truck, my Babel Fish was still at home.

However, having been through this process more than once in my lifetime, I knew she most likely wanted my ID, so I replied, “It’s right there with the paperwork.”

She looked at the bundle in her hand, but apparently became immensely confused the moment she set eyes upon the brightly colored paperclip holding it all together at the top edge. Therefore, she did the only thing she could think of to do, she sat staring at it. Then, after a moment in a violent display of her intense lack of manners she threw the bundle across the counter at me.

I sighed, picked it up, and slid the paperclip from the neatly organized stack of documentation. In that moment I considered giving her a lesson in how to accomplish this herself so that perhaps she could become enlightened as to the ways of the paperclip, and moreover so the next person would have an easier go of it. However, I had way too much to do on this particular day, and I simply didn’t have the necessary free time to school her in the finer points of paperclip removal, what with it being such a complicated process and all. Besides, why should I have all the fun? Let someone else try to educate her.

After slipping the paperclip off the bundle I extracted my soon to expire driver’s license – AKA the much sought after “nerdee” – and placed it on the counter before her, then laid the pile of required documents next to it.

She didn’t move. She simply looked at the ID, then looked at the pile of documentation, then looked at me.

I stared back at her.

Again she looked at the pile of documentation, then looked back at me.

Apparently, I had given her far too much credit. You see, not only was she incapable of operating a paperclip, it seemed also that the very notion of a folded piece of paper was light years beyond her grasp.

I sighed again, snatched up the pile of documents, then unfolded my birth certificate and laid it next to the ID… Then I placed the renewal form next to my ID… Then my voter ID card next to, you guessed it, my ID… Then the next bit of required info. And on, and on, until I had them all neatly laid out for her.

“There you go,” I said. “Just like it asks for on the renewal form.”

The rest of my time was spent watching her move in slow motion as she picked up various pieces of documentation and stared at them as if they were objects left behind by alien visitors. Every now and then she would open her mouth and say something like, “Theppidelookintlsee,” or “Zeefashion?”, or “Betebbydlr.”

Even without the aid of a Babel Fish, I managed to figure out what she wanted. I’m sure this was largely because, as I said earlier, I’d strolled this path more than once in my lifetime.

Eventually, after a bit of a wait, I walked out of the office with a brand spankin’ new Missouri Driver’s License, complete with the most god-awful photograph of all time sitting in one corner – just like it’s supposed to be.

In retrospect I suppose I could have become upset, or even irate over the poor treatment I received, but as I was leaving I took notice of the fact that I had not been singled out. She was being brainless and excessively rude to everyone else in line too. Besides, at the end of the day I like to treat everything I can as  a learning experience. An opportunity to expand my personal knowledge, if you will…

So, what did I learn in this particular instance?

Simple – License office workers are kind of like Vampires with O C D – If I’m ever attacked by one, all I have to do is throw a box of paperclips at “it”. He/she will be so confused by the ultra-high tech alien technology that I’ll have more than enough time to make my escape…

More to come…

Murv