Tumescent Camponotus Pennsylvanicus
Posted by Mike | Filed under Mike's Rambling
A significant number of my loyal readers expressed surprise and dismay at my use of the phrase “an ant with a boner” in a recent post. One went so far as to say, “I guess you aren’t really a nice guy after all.” Trust me, dear readers, I am a nice guy. I agonized for hours (well, a few minutes) over that very phrase. It is true that I generally avoid the risqué, but I felt in this case it was essential to the story.
When I first heard this ancient joke about overconfidence, I was probably playing kickball on a grammar school playground. I believe the phrase used was “an ant with a hard-on.” I doubt any of us at the time were even old enough to know what a hard-on was, but it was clearly dirty so we enjoyed it immensely. Just as clearly, it was too crude for my sophisticated blog. Whatever should I call the appendage in question? I remember Steve Martin struggling with an equally perplexing matter: What to call the female mammary organs. Melons? Headlights? Yabahoos? He finally concluded (correctly) that the proper term was “hooters.”
Sure, I could have gone with the clinical term, erection, but that didn’t seem as funny to me. “Big Johnson” seemed pretty funny, but that joke has been worn threadbare by all the T-shirts and other references (even my father used it in a lovely poem he wrote to my mother on Mother’s Day.) “Woody” probably would have worked. “Chubby” might have been too obscure. I’m not particularly fond of the equipment-related references such as “package” or “tool” or even, yes, “equipment.”
In the end, I resorted to the authoritative wisdom of one of my favorite web sites, Cracked.com. Not a day goes by without several boner references in that fine entertainment venue. If it’s good enough for Cracked, it’s good enough for me.
That said, I apologize for my shocking incivility, and promise to be more circumspect in the future.
Turn Up the Heat
Posted by Mike | Filed under Mike's Rambling
OK, I’ve been content to entertain you with my little stories, but I can see you’re a bit farther along in your little handbasket ride than I expected, and you’re so beleaguered with terrible news every day that I thought I’d better explain something in my avuncular, reassuring way that will make you feel better. Or at least keep you quiet for a while so I can get some sleep.
Of all the horror available for your viewing pleasure, Haiti destroyed, Iran getting nukes, terrorists hating us, blah, blah, blah, the one that simply refuses to go away is global warming. Man-made carbon dioxide is running amok. Another species goes extinct every time you flip on a light switch. You drive to work over the screaming bodies of baby polar bears. Every time you exhale you are destroying the planet. Go ahead, listen to your iPod while the sea rises up to your stupid neck. No wonder you’re scared. I’d be scared too if I had that corpulent toad Al Gore screaming in my face with his doughnut-laden breath of doom.
So what I have to say should come as a welcome surprise. No, I’m not going to tell you that climate change isn’t happening; of course it’s happening, as it has been doing for four and a half billion years. In fact we probably are in a warming trend, as we are still recovering from the Pliocene-Quaternary ice age, which started about two and a half million years ago, with the glaciation period ending a mere ten thousand years ago. In between these ice ages the Earth warms up to the point where Greenland, Iceland, and Antarctica are mostly ice-free; obviously we haven’t gotten there yet, but maybe we’ll get lucky and it won’t take much longer.
Now, we can’t take all the credit for the pleasant warming trend, as we only got here about 200,000 years ago, but maybe we are helping it along. My point is, that doesn’t mean we are destroying the planet. We are always talking about destroying the planet. When we invented atom bombs, we rubbed our hands in glee and said, “Now we can destroy the planet!” Now we believe we are doing it with our Hummers. Well let me tell you, Bunky, we aren’t Supermen. We’re like the ant with a boner, floating on its back down the river yelling, “Raise the drawbridge!” We cannot destroy the entire planet (at least not yet.) All we can do is destroy the planet for humans!
You see, that’s the good news! The planet will still be here! We may be able to take the polar bears with us, but there’s no way we’ll snuff out everybody! There are organisms on this planet that thrive at 176°F and higher. I’m sure the cockroaches can take it. Probably when we’re no longer eating everything in sight, whole new life forms will evolve that love the sun and generate their own natural sunblock, with built-in beach chairs growing out of their butts. Just because we’re not here to see it doesn’t mean it won’t be great! I’m sure the new owners will even be smart enough to avoid creating reality TV. Don’t you wish you could be here? Well, get over it; you won’t. But it’ll still be great.
Have a nice day.
Car of the Future!
Posted by Mike | Filed under Mike's Rambling
“Sir! Thank you for stopping by! Let me introduce you to the Car of the Future! This is the car that Big Auto and Big Oil don’t want you to know about!”
“But that looks like a 1960s Volvo with a solar panel on top.”
“Very perceptive, sir! Of course, this is just a prototype. With the help of savvy investors such as yourself coming in on the ground floor, we’ll soon be gearing up to produce millions of sleek, efficient and attractive vehicles. The American driving public will beat a path to our door. How can we miss? A gorgeous car that runs for free and defeats global warming?”
“This car runs for free?”
“Well, as I said, this is a prototype. It doesn’t have all the aerodynamics the production model will have. And this solar panel was designed for an RV. It was on sale at Camper World. The actual Car of the Future will have an integrated, high-efficiency solar array that will provide more power than the car will ever need! In fact, we’re working out a way to feed excess current back into the grid. This little beauty will actually be making you money as you drive down the road! Of course, we don’t want Big Electricity to find out about that too soon.”
“But this solar panel helps drive the car?”
“Absolutely, sir! We have no doubt the mileage has been improved tremendously! Of course, it’s an indirect benefit at this point, as we haven’t completed our research on how to install the electric motor and actually hook it to the drive train, but at this point the solar panel provides full power to the radio and the dome light, greatly reducing the drag on the alternator and allowing the engine to do what it was designed for; moving this car effortlessly down America’s highways and byways!”
“That panel sort of sticks up a lot. How is it in the wind?”
“Head winds and tail winds are no problem at all, sir. But until we achieve the integrated solar array, we don’t recommend driving it in crosswinds of greater than 25 miles per hour.”
“I see. Well, how do you keep the panel facing the sun?”
“Excellent question, sir! I can see you have an engineering background. As I’m sure you’ve noticed, the panel is now set up for eastbound driving. When you want to turn around, you simply stop and loosen these two wing nuts, tilt the panel over to the other side, climb back in and Go West, Young Man! Ha-ha!”
“What about going north or south?”
“Well, I admit at this point we haven’t gotten that completely worked out. My Mom has a large lazy susan that she hardly ever uses; if she lets me borrow it, I think we can work out a rotating mount system that will allow driving in a southerly or northerly direction. Of course, the farther north you go, the weaker the sun’s rays, so the car won’t be certified for use in Canada.”
“Hmm. Now what if I want to drive at night?”
“Why would you want to do that? Ha, just kidding, sir. Our research suggests that night driving will require a passenger leaning out the window and shining this large flashlight on the… Sir! Sir, wait a minute! Come back! This is the investment opportunity of a lifetime!”