John Warren's Blog

Let's say a guy named Roger is attracted to a woman named Elaine.  He asks her out to a movie; she accepts; they have a pretty good time. A few nights later he asks her out to dinner, and again they enjoy themselves.  They continue to see each other regularly, and after a while neither one of them is seeing anybody else.

And then, one evening when they're driving home, a thought occurs to Elaine, and, without really thinking, she says it aloud: "Do you realize that, as of tonight, we've been seeing each other for exactly six months?"

And then there is silence in the car. To Elaine, it seems like a very loud silence. She thinks to herself, “Geez, I wonder if it bothers him that I said that. Maybe he's been feeling confined by our relationship. Maybe he thinks I'm trying to push him into some kind of obligation that he doesn't want, or isn't sure of”.

And Roger is thinking: Gosh. Six months.

And Elaine is thinking, “But, hey, I'm not so sure I want this kind of relationship, either. Sometimes I wish I had a little more space, so I'd have time to think about whether I really want us to keep going the way we are, moving steadily toward ... I mean, where are we going? Are we just going to keep seeing each other at this level of intimacy? Are we heading toward marriage? Toward children?  Toward a lifetime together? Am I ready for that level of commitment? Do I really even know this person?”

And Roger is thinking, “ ... so that means it was... let's see....February when we started going out, which was right after I had the car at the dealer's, which means ... lemme check the odometer ... whoa! I am way overdue for an oil change here.”

And Elaine is thinking, “He's upset. I can see it on his face.  Maybe I'm reading this completely wrong. Maybe he wants more from our relationship, more intimacy, more commitment; maybe he has sensed - even before I sensed it - that I was feeling some reservations. Yes, I bet that's it. That's why he's so reluctant to say anything about

his own feelings. He's afraid of being rejected.”

And Roger is thinking, “....and I'm gonna have them look at the transmission again. I don't care what those morons say, it's still not shifting right.  And they better not try to blame it on the cold weather this time.  What cold weather? It's 87 degrees out, and this thing is shifting like a darn garbage truck, and I paid those incompetent thieves $600.”

And Elaine is thinking, “He's angry. And I don't blame him. I'd be angry, too.  I feel so guilty, putting him through this, but I can't help the way I feel. I'm just not sure.”

And Roger is thinking, “They'll probably say it's only a 90-day warranty.  That's exactly what they're gonna say, the scumbags.”

And Elaine is thinking, “Maybe I'm just too idealistic, waiting for a knight to come riding up on his white horse, when I'm sitting right next to a perfectly good person. A person I enjoy being with. A person I truly do care about. A person who seems to truly care about me. A person who is in pain because of my self-centered, schoolgirl romantic fantasy.”

And Roger is thinking, “Warranty? They want a warranty?  I'll give them a darn warranty. I'll take their warranty and stick it ....”

"Roger," Elaine says aloud.

"What?" says Roger, startled.

"Please don't torture yourself like this," she says, her eyes beginning to brim with tears. "Maybe I should never have ... Oh my, I feel so ..." (She breaks down, sobbing.)

"What?" says Roger.

"I'm such a fool," Elaine sobs. "I mean, I know there's no knight. I really know that. It's silly. There's no knight, and there's no horse."

"There's no horse?" says Roger.

"You think I'm a fool, don't you?" Elaine says.

"No!" says Roger, glad to finally know the correct answer.

"It's just that ... It's that I ... I need some time,"  Elaine says.

(There is a 15-second pause while Roger, thinking as fast as he can, tries to come up with a safe response. Finally he comes up with one that he thinks might work.)

"Yes," he says.

(Elaine, deeply moved, touches his hand.)

"Oh, Roger, do you really feel that way?" she says.

"What way?" says Roger.

"That way about time," says Elaine.

"Oh," says Roger. "Yes."

(Elaine turns to face him and gazes deeply into his eyes, causing him to become very nervous about what she might say next, especially if it involves a horse. At last she speaks.)

"Thank you, Roger," she says.

"Thank you," says Roger.

Then he takes her home, and she lies on her bed, a conflicted, tortured soul, and weeps until dawn, whereas when Roger gets back to his place, he opens a bag of Doritos, turns on the TV, and immediately becomes deeply involved in a rerun of a tennis match between two Czechoslovakians he never heard of.  A tiny voice in the

far recesses of his mind tells him that something major was going on back there in the car, but he is pretty sure there is no way he would ever understand what, and so he figures it's better if he doesn't think about it. (This is also Roger's policy regarding world hunger.)

The next day Elaine will call her closest friend, or perhaps two of them, and they will talk about this situation for six straight hours. In painstaking detail, they will analyze everything she said and everything he said, going over it time and time again, exploring every word, expression, and gesture for nuances of meaning, considering every possible ramification. They will continue to discuss this subject, off and on, for weeks, maybe months, never reaching any definite conclusions, but never getting bored with it, either.

Meanwhile, Roger, while playing racquetball one day with a mutual friend of his and Elaine's, will pause just before serving, frown, and say:

"Norm, did Elaine ever own a horse?"

I had big plans for this summer. Big,big plans. I was going to ride my 25 year old Harley around Lake Superior. I did make it to Two Harbors and beyond a few times. I was also going to ride to Minneapolis a couple of times to see my old pals. Never made it any further south than Hinckley.

Last fall my wife and I bought a cute little barbecue grill and used it a couple of times.  This summer, we were going to take it to Brighton Beach and other picnic spots in the area for relaxing afternoons. We never used it once! And now the weekends available to do such things are dwindling fast and I'm starting to panic.

In my defense, June and July were were very rainy and wet. August has been hotter than a gila monster's kitchen. And there were some weekends we just wanted to relax. After living in Florida and California for 20-plus years, I still have to readjust to the relatively small window of warm weather months and activities. When it comes to enjoying summer in the Northland, time is of the essence! Next summer will see no procrastination on my part! Until then, I'm going to cram in as much stuff as I can in the next few weeks.  

Yep, it's Fair Time again in St. Paul, and thousands of folks will drop big bucks for a day of fun and culinary adventure. My wife and I went to the fair last year, for the first time in many years. After parking and paying admission, we were already out $32 and hadn't even done anything yet. Dave Strandberg talks about the walloping your wallet takes on his blog on this site. What shocked me as much as the expense of everything, were the changes.

I loved the fair when I was a kid; espcially the Midway. The Midway is now quite small and politically correct. No more Club Lido with the "exotic" dancing girls, no exhibits of rats from the sewers of France that were said to be the size of horses, fewer spook houses and....no more freak shows! I guess I shouldn't be suprised about the freak show's demise in these hyper-sensitive times, but that was always one of my favorite parts of the fair.  Some were real, some were fake, but it was fun.

We did go to the sideshow last year, but it was a letdown. "Bat Girl" turned out to be a woman with bat wings that looked like they were made from black Glad Bags. "Spiderwoman" was a stuffed cloth spider body on a box with a woman sticking her head through a hole and several other gimmicks. It didn't help that the same 3 or 4 people were portraying these "mistakes of nature". That pop-eyed guy wasn't even there. No Lizard Man, Lobster Boy, Rubber Man, etc. Just cheap tricks and worn out props. I still kinda liked it, though

The photos in this slideshow are amazing...whether by skill or pure luck, if any of the pix were snapped a milli-second sooner or later, the results would not have been so amazing.  Check it out.

John Warren

Cool piece of History

Starting in 1941, an increasing number of British Airmen found themselves as the involuntary guests of the Third Reich, and the Crown was casting about for ways and means to facilitate their escape. Now obviously, one of the most helpful aids to that end is a useful and accurate map, one showing not only where stuff was, but also showing the locations of 'safe houses' where a POW on-the-lam could go for food and shelter. 

Paper maps had some real drawbacks -- they make a lot of noise when you open and fold them, they wear out rapidly, and if they get wet, they turn into mush. 

Someone in MI-5 (similar to America's OSS) got the idea of printing escape maps on silk. It's durable, can be scrunched-up into tiny wads, and unfolded as many times as needed, and makes no noise whatsoever.
 

At that time, there was only one manufacturer in Great Britain that had perfected the technology of printing on silk, and that was John Waddington, Ltd. When approached by the government, the firm was only too happy to do its bit for the war effort.
 

By pure coincidence, Waddington was also the U.K. Licensee for the popular American board game, Monopoly. As it happened, 'games and pastimes' was a category of item qualified for insertion into 'CARE packages', dispatched by the International Red Cross to prisoners of war.
 

Under the strictest of secrecy, in a securely guarded and inaccessible old workshop on the grounds of Waddington's, a group of sworn-to-secrecy employees began mass producing escape maps, keyed to each region of Germany or Italy where Allied POW camps were regional system). When processed, these maps could be folded into such tiny dots that they would actually fit inside a Monopoly playing piece.
 

As long as they were at it, the clever workmen at Waddington's also managed to add:

1. A playing token, containing a small magnetic compass

2. A two-part metal file that could easily be screwed together

3. Useful amounts of genuine high-denomination German, Italian, and French currency, hidden within the piles of Monopoly money!
 

British and American air crews were advised, before taking off on their first mission, how to identify a 'rigged' Monopoly set -- by means  of a tiny red dot, one cleverly rigged to look like an ordinary printing glitch, located in the corner of the Free Parking square.
 

Of the estimated 35,000 Allied POWS who successfully escaped, an estimated one-third were aided in their flight by the rigged Monopoly sets. Everyone who did so was sworn to secrecy indefinitely, since the British Government might want to use this highly successful ruse in still another, future war. The story wasn't declassifieduntil 2007, when the surviving craftsmen fromWaddington's, as well as the firm itself, werefinally honored in a public ceremony.It's always nice when you can play that 'Get Out of Jail Free' card!
 

 

Story verification

http://www.truthorfiction.com/rumors/m/monopoly-game.htm

I like puns to a certian extent..a cheap laugh. Here are a few..

JW

1. The roundest knight at King Arthur's round table was Sir Cumference.
>>> He acquired his size from too much pi.
>>>
>>>
>>> 2. I thought I saw an eye doctor on an Alaskan island, but it turned
>> out
>>> to be an optical Aleutian .
>>>
>>> 3. She was only a whiskey maker, but he loved her still.
>>>
>>> 4. A rubber band pistol was confiscated from algebra class, because it
>>> was a weapon of math disruption.
>>>
>>> 5. No matter how much you push the envelope, it'll still be stationery.
>>>
>>> 6. A dog gave birth to puppies near the road and was cited for
>>> littering.
>>>
>>> 7. A grenade thrown into a kitchen in France would result in Linoleum
>>> Blownapart.
>>>
>>> 8. Two silk worms had a race. They ended up in a tie.
>>>
>>> 9. A hole has been found in the nudist camp wall. The police are
>> looking
>>> into it.
>>>
>>> 10. Atheism is a non-prophet organization.
>>>
>>> 11. Two hats were hanging on a hat rack in the hallway. One hat said to
>>> the other: 'You stay here; I'll go on a head..'
>>>
>>> 12. I wondered why the baseball kept getting bigger. Then it hit me.
>>>
>>> 13. A sign on the lawn at a drug rehab center said: 'Keep off the
>>> Grass.'
>>>
>>> 14. The short fortune-teller who escaped from prison was a small medium
>>> at large.
>>>
>>> 15. The man who survived mustard gas and pepper spray is now a seasoned
>>> veteran.
>>>
>>> 16. A backward poet writes inverse.
>>>
>>> 17. In a democracy it's your vote that counts. In feudalism it's your
>>> count that votes.
>>>
>>> 18. When cannibals ate a missionary, they got a taste of religion.
>>>

Anyone who's spent any amount of time around Lake Superior knows how sneaky and aggressive seagulls can get when it comes to snatching food. I even had a gull steal a cheeseburger from my red-hot grill at Brighton Beach one afternoon! But this....The world's most forward seagull meets the world's laziest cat. Click below.

JW 

http://www.flixxy.com/seagull-and-cat.htm

I've actually lived in some of these places..and it's all true!

JW

RETIRE WHERE???? Here are your choices:
>
>
> You can retire to Phoenix, Arizona where...
> 1. You are willing to park 3 blocks away because you found shade.
> 2. You've experienced condensation on your hiney from the hot water in the toilet bowl.
> 3. You can drive for 4 hours in one direction and never leave town.
> 4. You have over 100 recipes for Mexican food.
> 5. You know that "dry heat" is comparable to what hits you in the face when you open your oven door.
> 6. The 4 seasons are: tolerable, hot, really hot, and ARE YOU KIDDING ME??!!
>
> OR
>
> You can retire to California where...
> 1. You make over $250,000 and you still can't afford to buy a house.
> 2. The fastest part of your commute is going down your driveway.
> 3. You know how to eat an artichoke.
> 4. You drive your rented Mercedes to your neighborhood block party.
> 5. When someone asks you how far something is, you tell them how long it will take to get there rather than how many miles away it is.
> 6. The 4 seasons are: Fire, Flood, Mud, and Drought.
>
> OR
>
> You can retire to New York City where...
> 1. You say "the city" and expect everyone to know you mean Manhattan.
> 2. You can get into a four-hour argument about how to get from Columbus Circle to Battery Park, but can't find Wisconsin on a map.
> 3. You think Central Park is "nature."
> 4. You believe that being able to swear at people in their own language makes you multi-lingual.
> 5. You've worn out a car horn. (ed. note if you have a car).
> 6. You think eye contact is an act of aggression.
>
> OR
>
> You can retire to Maine where...
> 1. You only have four spices: salt, pepper, ketchup, and Tabasco.
> 2. Halloween costumes fit over parkas.
> 3. You have more than one recipe for moose.
> 4. Sexy lingerie is anything flannel with less than eight buttons.
> 5. The four seasons are: winter, still winter, almost winter, and construction.
>
> OR
>
> You can retire to the Deep South where...
> 1. You can rent a movie and buy bait in the same store.
> 2. "Y'all" is singular and "all y'all" is plural.
> 3. "He needed killin" is a valid defense.
> 4. Everyone has 2 first names: Billy Bob, Jimmy Bob, Mary Sue, Betty Jean, Mary Beth, etc.
> 5. Everything is either "in yonder," "over yonder" or "out yonder." It's important to know the difference, too.
>
> OR
>
> You can retire to Colorado where...
> 1. You carry your $3,000 mountain bike atop your $500 car.
> 2. You tell your husband to pick up Granola on his way home and so he stops at the day care center.
> 3. A pass does not involve a football or dating.
> 4. The top of your head is bald, but you still have a pony tail.
>
> OR
>
> You can retire to the Midwest where...
> 1. You've never met any celebrities, but the mayor knows your name.
> 2. Your idea of a traffic jam is ten cars waiting to pass a tractor.
> 3. You have had to switch from "heat" to "A/C" on the same day.
> 4. You end sentences with a preposition: "Where's my coat at?"
> 5. When asked how your trip was to any exotic place, you say, "It was different!"
>
> OR
>
> FINALLY You can retire to Florida where.
> 1. You eat dinner at 3:15 in the afternoon.
> 2.. All purchases include a coupon of some kind -- even houses and cars.
> 3. Everyone can recommend an excellent dermatologist.
> 4. Road construction never ends anywhere in the state.
> 5. Cars in front of you often appear to be driven by headless people.
>
> SO MANY CHOICES ! ? ! ? !
>