The Rusted Musket

There are of course 2 parts to any conversation, speaking and listening: but I find that most conversing people, myself included, seem to like speaking the most and not so much the part where we have to listen.  Maybe this is because listening is a virtue and speaking a talent.  Let me explain…  Talents come naturally therefor if speaking is your talent you’ll naturally like to chat whereas listening, as a virtue, is unnatural to Sir Speaksalot because it is earned by training through, not along with, his impulse.   In closing, listening  is a very alien artifact to most of us with the gift of gab therefor the acquisition of an attentive ear should rank among the highest of priorities for the budding conversationalist…

When hosting a dinner party it is generally understood that you’ll be the one providing the food.  In the same vein the host should not neglect, atleast initially, to provide the evenings other pivotal feature, the conversation.  With this in mind it is surprising how many people are actually very poor hosts!  While the host might put forth a lot of effort to make some food (that’s in and out of the system with in a few hours) they give little or no effort to themes or topics that guests might for the next week or two be enriched, intrigued, humored, or delighted by.  Never, under any circumstance should the evenings conversation depend upon banal conversational cop outs such as, “How are you?” or “Whats going on?”.  Those brain dead trivial questions should be avoided like the plague because in essence they transmit the vibe of, “I’ve got nothing to say, I’m boring, please you talk”.  There might be occasion to use those phrases casually, but never ever when you’ve gone through the trouble to invite someone over.  Instead start out with a funny story that stands out from last week and then gradually get into deeper matters as the evening progresses…

I remember the old America when a man could make left hand turns as he pleased without waiting for permission from the increasingly ever present left hand turn arrow.  I ask you, who hasn’t been tempted to run one of those babysitter lights as you sit waiting and waiting at any of the many empty intersections around 1 in the morning for your left hand turn arrow to turn green in order to “legally” make your left hand turn!!

Image Credit: Exchange3d.com

Who would have thought that when these three wolves howled at the moon their magical powers could actually make this happen! Ironically, this viral internet craze hit the midwest just a few weeks ago prompting one of my more “in the loop” friends to send me the amazon link.  If you haven’t already read the customer reviews do it, you’ll pee your pants laughing!

Image Credit: Snakeandsnake.com

Isn’t this kind of a oxymoron? I mean think about it, everyone is inudated with scantily clad women on a daily basis, whether it be on TV (Baywatch anyone?), or the advertisments people get in the mail, or the tabloids at the grocery store checkout. So why is there court action against someone who merely has a scantily clad mannequi? Its so irconic that people care more about a bit of plastic than what their own kids are likely wearing…

It’s getting on my nerves that every time I go to MSN or Yahoo they have these swine flu warnings paired with a picture of as many people as they could fit in the frame wearing those blue surgical mask thingies; lame, annoying, and overplayed.  That is of course till the end of the world epidemic actually happens wiping out 2/3’s of all humanity with the 1/3 that survives being the ones in the MSN/Yahoo pictures who wore the surgical mask thingies…

Okay so I figure I should explain my recent absence… I’ve been a bit busy lately and was actually out of the country for two weeks… When I got back it took a while to get back in the groove, but now that I’ve been back for a couple of weeks I hope to be posting several times a week again.

When I was a wee child it was practically a given that I would take up any opportunity for tom foolery.  The only obstacle keeping me from repeat crimes but not necessarily my most current shenanigan was this thing called “The Spank”.  Contrary to popular belief, this deterrent does work and did work because it hurt like hell.  Anyways, this is how it would typically go down.  I’d get in trouble with mom busting me and then telling me that dad was going to administer “The Spank” when he got home.  I’d live the rest of the afternoon with an uneasy feeling in the pit of my stomach till around 5 when I’d hear the garage door open whereby announcing the arrival of the supreme law and commander of the Kelm universe!  By this point you may have been wondering about the relevance of the title vs story but worry not because here is where it all ties together.  So, in the same way that the scientist Pavlov conditioned his dog to salivate when hearing a chime I would hear the garage door and not salivate of course but get the cold sweats of dread instead.  Even to this day, in a very very small way I get an unpleasant sensation in my innermost being when I hear a garage door opening…

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Little old I know, but its very funny.

Since I posted about newspapers and mentioned their reading level, I figured a post about people and reading would make sense.

I just read this article, which tells us that Amazon will be releasing books for the Iphone soon. At the end of the article the author mentions that most readers are older and that people under the age of 30 don’t read much. I find that statement to be very sad, but all to true. I personally love reading. I also love playing video games. But as much fun and immersive as video games can be, nothing compares to a good historical fiction, science fiction or fantasy novel. The books just draw you in much better, and as such it is very sad that many people don’t read books very much.

Another casualty of the lack of reading amoung young people is that they end up not being very well informed about the World (or country) they live in. Everyone needs to go to the Wall Street Journal online, or news.yahoo.com or something and read a couple stories every day, just so that you know what is going on and make a few brain cell connections. Even better would be trying to read several books, fiction and otherwise, every year and maybe picking up the Sunday paper once a month.