Commentary - Humor - Nonsense - Sarcasm - Satire - Whimsy
On the Road with DR. EVIL
Vol. III, No. 1, 1 January 2001
A Missive of
Irregular Frequency and Questionable Worth
CRYOGENIC
TIPPY
This one comes from Dr. and Mrs. Evil's evil daughter. It seems that one of her husband's aunts from central Ohio had a dog named Tippy. Tippy was a smallish black and white short-haired farm dog. Her mistress had grown up on the farm and had, over the years, buried several family pets on the property. Tippy had traveled with her mistress to live her last years outside her home state, first in New York and Pennsylvania, then Illinois. As she aged, Tippy began to lose her steadiness of gate and, in accordance to her name, began to walk a little bit sideways. During the winter of 1998-99, at the ripe old age of 16, she passed away. Her mistress wanted to bury her with her predecessor pets on the family farm in Ohio, but there was no point in traveling there at that time since she could not easily be interred into the frozen ground. Therefore, she arranged Tippy "comfortably" curled up and froze her in the family food freezer, intending to give her an appropriate burial the following Spring. For one reason or another, the funereal mission was never accomplished and Tippy remains, to this day, blissfully and cryogenically sleeping at the bottom of that freezer. Perhaps we shouldn't feel too sorry for her, though. I'm sure there's not a single chunk of dehydrated, processed, reprocessed, and reconstituted chicken guts in the freezer with her. She's probably comfortably resting on a bed of ground beef patties. Maybe there's a 12 lb. rolled rib roast just off the end of her nose.
TEMPERATURE
FORECASTING
The Dayton Daily News offers a weather page on which, among other things, the high and low temperature forecasts are presented for the current as well as the following four days. At the top of the page, they are presented as fractions, such as 20/16 to represent the predicted high and low for each of the five days, along with little pictures of clouds, blue sky, the sun, rain drops and snow flakes in combination as appropriate for the predictions. At the bottom of the page, the high and low temperature forecasts are repeated in the form of a vertical bar graph along with the actual highs and lows for the five previous days as well as the historic averages. Over the past several months I've noticed that the two sets of high and low temperature predictions very rarely agree. As best I can tell, they originate from the same forecaster, so why they don't, I do not understand. I would expect differences between predicted and actual, but why are there differences in the predictions for the high and low for the same day. After following the predictions for several days and comparing them with the actuals, I found that the predictions differed about as much with each other for the same day as either one did with the actual. Also, it was not unusual for a forecast made 5 days in advance for a given day to be as accurate as one reported on the morning of that day. Now, that's heavy scientific stuff. All I can say is, I'm glad I don't have to make important decisions based on what the high or low temperatures are going to be for the next few days - or even for that day.
CONSEQUENCES WELL EARNED
After doing some last minute Christmas shopping, I was making my way to my car when I noticed that another driver was backing out of her parking space. I couldn't help but notice that her right rear tire was completely flat. My immediate reaction was to wonder how she could not "feel" it. I trotted up to her window and shouted, "Your right rear tire is flat." She completely ignored me. However, as she sped off down the parking lot road, she raised her right hand and awarded me "The Finger." I doubt that she got very far before shredding that tire. When I turned to go to my car, I was met by a middle age couple on their way to their car. I made eye contact with the man. He wagged his head back and forth in wonderment.
CONFUSION
IN TV LAND
We subscribe to a TV cable service. As subscribers we receive a half-inch thick monthly magazine with the schedules for every TV station known to man, reviews of movies and all kinds of stuff inside. We can also access Channel 14 to review the schedule for the current day. So that we can view an occasional movie without commercial interruptions, we also rent a little box of electronics that sits on top of the TV. This also gives us access to another guide on the screen that reports the complete schedule for the 24-hour period beginning with the current time. Because we subscribe to the Dayton Daily we also receive a Sunday supplement reporting the schedule for the entire week ahead. The weekday editions report the schedule for the current day. One would think that, with all of these sources, we would know with certainty what is on television. Well, don't count on it. All too often there is considerable disagreement among the various sources. I would expect a certain amount of inaccuracy in the Dayton Daily sources, since that city is likely supplied with different programming. I would, however, expect the information supplied to subscribers by the cable company to be accurate. Without defining "accurate," I would say that the schedules supplied by the company are NOT - especially with regard to the movies available through "Pay Per View." There is so little correspondence between offerings reported by the two on-TV and the magazine schedules that one truly can never be certain what is playing. If I'm any good at deciphering the scrambled pictures on the premium channels, it looks as if they are the only ones that are accurately reported - especially the "skin" flicks. Now that called for a great deal of single-minded and dedicated research.
See you at the next rest stop.
Dr. Evil
Why yes, I'm Evil.
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