Random Thursday

Serving up the freshest, hottest, most succulent trivialities of the day…

  • I’m hardly a credible film critic, having seen only one of the movies that got an Academy Award nomination for best picture — Little Miss Sunshine — and coming away from that viewing completely unimpressed, but I have to think that if you still believe that the Oscars are non-political and only about the art, you’ve surely done a monumental job of rationalizing why Apocalypto didn’t get a nod in the foreign language film category.
  • The power of the internet to bring people together is amazing, isn’t it? If you’ve been paying attention, you’ll recall the Great Potato Peel Fiasco from last Christmas. Apart from providing great amusement to a certain sadistic segment of the Gazette readership, it’s apparently also attracting similarly afflicted souls from around the world, as our visitor logs are showing fairly regular searches for phrases like “garbage disposal clogged by potato peels” or “why can’t garbage disposals handle potato peels” or “instructions for inflicting a painful death on (&#*%&^(Q garbage disposal clogged with potato peels.” OK, I made that last one up, although I’m almost certain that’s what the searchers are thinking. Anyway, one such searcher came to the Gazette, then actually emailed me. Here’s the amazing thing: it was a former Fort Stockton high school classmate now living in Illinois whom I haven’t seen or corresponded with in decades! Imagine reconnecting via a shared potato peel experience. There’s bound to be a Hallmark movie idea in there somewhere. Or at least an e-card.
  • Incidentally, I apologize to those who are coming here in hopes of finding a solution to your potato peel clogs, although I suspect you’re at least a bit content to learn that you’re not the only ones who experienced this tragedy.
  • Despite good intentions to the contrary, I forgot to watch Tuesday’s live webcast from Odessa’s Alliance Hospital of a “minimal incision total knee replacement.” So, I popped over to OR-Live.com this afternoon to view the archived footage. I was doing pretty well until the first scalpel cut on the patient’s bent knee laid that tissue wide open and then I remembered I had to wash my hair, mow the lawn and wash the car. If that’s an example of “minimal incision,” I don’t even want to contemplate the alternative.
  • Speaking of minimal incision, the tree service guys came out yesterday and completed the pruning and clean-up of our ice-damaged oak. Here again, I’m not an expert, but I have this nagging feeling that they could have exercised a bit more restraint in their pruning. Ah, I’m probably overly sensitive; what do you think…does it look OK to you?
Photo of a dead tree
Update: This is not our tree.
Repeat: This is NOT our tree!

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12 comments

  1. I am here to solve your potato peel problems! We also suffered from this every. single. holiday. until we got the Badger 3000. (Ok, ok, it’s really called the Badger 5 but Badger 3000 is so much more fun to say – you have to do the car salesman echo voice thing though.) Anyway, we replaced the old little disposal that couldn’t deal with potato skins with this little 1/2 horsepower baby and I’m pretty sure we could shred tree branches and have no issues. They don’t call it a badger for nothing! (Though I have wondered…are badgers known for their destructive capabilities?)
    As for the tree. Well, I’ll just reiterate what Tim says when I come home with a really bad haircut, “No, honey, it looks fine.”

  2. Interestingly (or, perhaps not), some of the search phrases in the logs included “Badger.” Seriously.
    I’m beginning to believe that the problem is not so much with the disposer as with the pipes it feeds. And the fact that the thin profiles of potato peels allows some of them to evade the shredding action and slip unnoticed into the drain where they eventually team up to wreak havoc. I’m pretty sure that’s why civilizations through the ages have referred to the otherwise lowly spud as the Terrorist of Tubers.
    If Congress truly cares about solving the immigration problem, they’ll start by studying the potato peel in the drain migration problem. All wisdom flows therefrom.

  5. That’s not really your tree, is it? If it is, then you must have asked my wife to prune it.
    Sorry, I can’t resist:
    Badgers? Badgers? We dun need no steenkin badgers!
    … because we don’t even have a garbage disposal.

  6. Reunited by potato peels. What are the odds? That’s hilarious.
    And what have they done to your tree?! It looks like my husband was released into the wild with his chain saw again. Or Edward Scissorhands. Is that really your tree?!

  7. Oh and I forgot to ask before… did your friend know that it was you before he clicked on the Fire Ant Gazette link and if not, how long before he figured it out? Either way, that’s pretty sweet.

  8. Gwynne, refresh the page, then look again at the bottom of the post.
    Apparently, my humor is too subtle for my own good. (And that’s the first time I’ve ever been able to say that!)
    Jim, no…he had never heard of the Gazette, at least, not to my knowledge. He got to poking around and realized that he knew the crazed author, and that’s when he decided to email.

  10. I knew I was in trouble when I got an email from my mother saying that my dad wasn’t too impressed with the job the tree service did. 😉
    Just to set the record straight, that’s actually the skeleton of a pine or fir tree (not sure which) that was a victim of the great fires a few years back in Yellowstone National Park. That is, if you can believe the site I stole borrowed the photo from. I’m beginning to believe you can’t trust anyone on the web anymore.

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