| August 15, 2003 - A few oddities |
| Dear Friends, I thought today I'd just chitty-chatty about this oddity and that oddity. So that's enough of an introduction. The day before yesterday I was just walking along when I passed this strange woman. She stuck the thumb of her left hand in her left ear and the thumb of her right hand in her mouth. Then she started wiggling the fingers on both hands, tossing her head up and down, and whinnying like a horse! Mucho bizarro! And then today I passed a street musician who was playing "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer" on a horn of some sort. Talk about getting the creeps! It was just like the time I wandered into a Christmas store in the middle of July and thought I was going to throw up. Oh, I forgot to tell you that I saw Poodle Woman the other day. I haven't seen her in ages. I'm happy to report that she hasn't changed a bit. She still has her matching shirt and barette ensemble. If you're not certain who I mean, here's a link to where I talk about her - Poodle Woman. A couple of years ago my friend K. sent me an electronic Diwali card. Not only am I not Hindu, but it wasn't even Diwali! But the card was still pretty funny. So I went to Blue Mountain on the Internet and found an animated ecard of Siva and sent it to him. Siva had six arms and as the card played Indian music, the arms moved around. After that, Blue Mountain decided they wanted to charge for the ecards, so I never really used them again. However, yesterday I got really curious about the kinds of cards that Blue Mountain now has. So I looked on their site and found these great, but perplexing, Chinese Valentine's and Chinese New Year's cards. One Chinese Valentine's card showed a boy on a cloud and a girl on another one. The caption read, "Riding the balloon won't take you to meet the Weaving Maiden". A balloon picks up the boy but then it pops and he falls out of the sky. Then the next caption read "Neither will the flying saucer take you there". This time a flying saucer picks up the boy and then flies off into space totally out of control. The final line read "The magpies build the bridge that take you to her". A flock of birds interlock themselves between the two clouds. The boy uses them as a bridge over to his girlfriend. The amusing Chinese New Year's card that I saw showed two cranes jumping up and down in a snowstorm. The caption on it read "Pines greet wealth and abundant fortune at the door. Auspicious crane dances bring spring back to earth". It was kind of like reading the instructions on those paper wrappers that chopsticks come in at Chinese restaurants. They often make reference to enjoying your "nice Chinese food" and "auspicious" this and "fortunate" that. I've noticed that Chinese menues sometimes describe the entrees in similar language, like this "General Tso's Chicken - Chicken as prepared by famous and fortunate General Tso". Or "Kung Pao Beef - Tender and auspicious heifer seasoned with happy spicey". Which leads me to a major complaint I have about certain restaurants. Why, oh why, do places insist on calling themselves world famous, like "Joe's Place - Home of Our World Famous Hamburgers", but then when you go overseas, or even into a neighboring state, nobody has ever heard of them? It's just like how one time at Ye Olde Watering Hole, they had printed up a list of the various bands that were going to be there and stuck it in plastic holders on each table. At the bottom of the paper was "And be certain to join Felix, bartender extraordinaire, for Happy Hour". Huh? I thought "bartender extraordinaire" was a little high falutin' for Ye Olde Watering Hole. Do you really think I'm going to go rushing off to a diner that bills itself as world famous? Do you think I say to my friends, "Oh let's go to Ye Olde Watering Hole for happy hour! I hear they have a bartender extraordinaire there!"? Next entry Previous entry Go to diary entries Go back home |