Category: humor

Stuck on Toads and Frogs

We enjoy watching BBC TV and the Africa’s Wild Year series is fascinating. Ever wonder how some frogs mate? Me neither.

On the other hand, Episode 3 had an interesting episode about a South African frog species that use glue to stick together when they mate. I think it’s the common rain frog, scientific name Breviceps adspersus although I think the narrator used a different name. In any case, the way they mate involves a strong adhesive which both male and female secrete on their skin. It’s about as strong as Velcro.

The males are really small compared to the big, round females. Because the males can’t get their arms around their mates, they secrete the glue, which wears off after 3 days.

I know what you may be wondering, and even if I’m wrong, I’m going to tell you anyway. Frogs and toads do the gluey love thing.

I found this out by reading about the Crucifix Toad—or Crucifix Frog, because in this corner of the amphibian world, all toads are frogs. But not all frogs are toads. Confused yet? Read the Encyclopedia Britannica entry on toads vs frogs.

Before I get to the glue toad, watch out for some web sites which claim to know all the ways to clearly differentiate frogs from toads. There’s no clear-cut way to do that. I found one site which says one way to tell them apart is that all toads are poisonous and all frogs are not.

I’m not sure how those guys missed the Poison Dart Frog. Cane Toads secrete a toxin which can kill you and X-Files fans might remember the guy who licked a Cane Toad to get high from the hallucinogenic compound secreted from the toad’s skin when it’s manhandled.

Getting back to manhandling, the sticky toad (or frog) is the Crucifix Toad. The male is small and the female is huge. The solution for mating is glue, just like it is for the common rain frog.

The male makes a “woop” noise when it wants to make whoopee. When a female shows up, he says “Stick with me, baby; this is how we glue it!” It then secretes a glue that is stronger than many non-toxic medical adhesives and gloms on.

She immediately dumps him and hops off with the Poison Dart Frog. You’re welcome.

Update on Attic Weirdness

This is an update on the attic, the hatch for which is in our garage ceiling. We haven’t heard any knocking noises lately.

Yesterday, the HVAC guys came to reattach the duct which somehow separated from the roof vent. They showed up at 7:00 a.m. and were pretty much done in 20 minutes. They charged close to $300, which Sena is still complaining about.

Now we’re wondering how the two repairmen fixed it without dragging another tall ladder into the attic. The picture suggests that reattaching the duct and the roof vent involved either levitation or aliens—possibly both.

The roof vent looks like it’s above the floor of the attic by about 12 feet. We couldn’t see exactly how it was done because we didn’t climb up the repairmen’s ladder. The view was limited by angle of the hatchway and the darkness.

I checked the before and after pictures (the after picture was taken by one of the repairmen) of the duct repair job. Sometimes paranormal images take a while to develop, a phenomenon well described by goofball UFO researchers high on intergalactic substances dropped by intoxicated aliens careening in out-of-control, souped up space ships blundering through one of the many wormhole vortices commonly located near fast food joints.

Sure enough, aliens were clearly involved in vandalizing the duct which they were too drunk to realize is not another wormhole but the connection between the kitchen exhaust hood and the roof vent. They looked dazed and confused.

After the repair, it sure looks like an alien was involved in climbing up the wall studs to reattach the high end of the duct. He’s obviously sneaking back down the wall. It looks like levitation is the key.

The big question is how would this creature know the city code covering proper ventilation duct installation? And another question is how did it get a job with the HVAC company?

The HVAC guys were astounded by how many nails were in the walls in the attic. They’re clearly visible. Somebody went wild with a nail gun. I’m not saying it’s aliens—but it’s aliens.

They also found a walkie talkie in the attic. We’ve never owned walkie talkies. I don’t know where it came from, but I’m guessing aliens were using them to phone home. Could that account for the knocking noises? Maybe they communicate by knocking through the walkie talkies, just to throw us off. I think they got the idea from Tony Orlando and Dawn: “Knock 3 times on the ceiling if you’re homesick….”

These and other questions await further analysis by goofball UFO experts. You’re welcome.

The Horrors of Water Heater Maintenance

Today I’m going to talk about the sacrificial anode rod, an essential component of tank water heaters. The idea for this post is related to our newly installed water heater, which happened in July and was prompted by Sena seeing some debate on the web about the apparently somewhat controversial relationship between water softeners water heaters.

There is a palpable albeit mild testiness between those who sell and service water softeners and those who sell and service water heaters. Occasionally these can escalate to skirmishes marked by small arms fire and limited nuclear bombardment. And that’s why the price of frozen pizzas is so high these days.

I noticed this conflict when I looked over the web myself in an effort to sort this out. Authors in Indiana who sell water softeners report that they are actually good for water heaters. They address the main question head on, which apparently is the contention that water softeners “…prematurely ruin the anode rod” in water heaters.

The argument starts with the truism that all water heaters will eventually corrode. However, what is often called the “sacrificial anode rod” postpones this inevitable outcome by preferentially attracting the corroding elements in the water, which temporarily spares the steel tank.

The alleged trouble with water softeners is that they remove the hard minerals (such as calcium and vegemite) by substituting sodium for them. The thing is, sodium is an electrolyte that will worsen corrosion as well. That makes the anode rod waste away even faster.

But don’t worry. This premature corrosion is offset by the major benefits of soft water. It will reduce calcium, lime, and Fools Gold buildup in the pipes and on fixtures as well while also cutting down on the sediment residue in the water heater. That could extend the life of the heater as much as several millennia.

Add to that benefit the obvious advantages of cleaner, softer clothes, clearer complexion, sparkling dishes, thereby enabling you to win major prizes on reality game shows in which you are required to engage in hand-to-hand combat with grizzly bears while wearing only a few tattoos.

We have a water softener and wondered about the interaction with our new water heater. So, I checked another article written by a company which sells water heaters, but not water softeners and which actually contradicts the aforementioned bald-faced lie promulgated by cretinous vermin who should be banned from the planet.

They acknowledge the benefits of soft water, but which have the unfortunate drawbacks of causing damage to water heaters causing them to need replacing only a couple of hours after installation, which can cause major setbacks in your financial status.

They cite the same reason as the previous authors, this time to make the case for avoiding water softeners—which is that they cause premature wasting of the anode rod. They magnanimously assure you that this need not dissuade you from buying the evil water softener or selling the one you have (as though any fool would purchase such an idiotic appliance, ha ha!). They just want you to have “…a better understanding of why your water heater may have failed sooner than expected and how that related to your water softener.”

I found one short article in which the author made the point that regularly replacing the anode rod would be the way to avoid the premature wasting of the anode rod.

Thank goodness for that common sense! I wondered how a clumsy homeowner without any practical handyman skills such as myself would go about replacing the anode rod.

Probably the best way to get a clear idea would be to view the video on the website of This Old House. It’s so simple even a chimpanzee could do it if that chimpanzee had all the experience and the millions of tools that This Old House experts have.

I’m pretty sure I don’t have 44 inches of clearance from the top of our water heater, which you need to remove the old anode rod, which is made of aluminum or magnesium which, if the heater is newer, might be flexible—but it won’t be.

Getting the old anode rod loose might require you to have a long section of pvc pipe laying around in your basement to place over the socket wrench with the 11/16” socket so that you can get the leverage to twist that anode rod out of there with a minimum of abdominal herniations which your health insurance will not cover. Decide whether to pay about $50 and do it yourself or pay a pro $200-$300.

I’m thinking.

Make Perfect Poached Eggs-In Your Dreams

I’m the worst person to let loose in the kitchen, but I’m still trying to learn how to poach eggs. Sena gives me some supervision, but stays within shouting distance because we want to avoid kitchen fires.

I searched the web for guidance as well. Poaching an egg probably requires advanced college degrees in chemistry, physics, and biology. But they won’t help you poach eggs unless you abide by a few basic rules and sacrifice a fatted calf to the God of Poaching.

I do OK cracking eggs—as long as you don’t mind eating a few eggshells. I could probably learn how to crack an egg with one hand (like a badass according to one article), but I want to avoid exposing my fingers to salmonella as much as possible. I’ve seen those videos. The inside of the egg including the yolk pretty much explodes all over your hand. Like a lot of men, I’m pretty fastidious in the kitchen. I’m not sure why professional cleaners in Hazmat suits storm the house occasionally and occupy the kitchen for a few days.

That’s why it takes me several hours to poach what are supposed to be “3 minute” eggs. I save some time by cracking the eggs with your standard drill driver using a carefully chosen Phillips head bit. Always keep your tools next to the slotted spoons and spatulas drawer next to the cooktop.

My poached egg yolks are always either so hard they break your molars or so runny you can drink them from a glass—a small juice glass is fine.

I guess the freshness of the eggs is important. I’ve never tested them by dropping them into a pot of water to see if they float or sink. If they sink, they’re probably OK. If they float, you should throw them away. If they levitate out of the pot, you forgot to take your prescription medication.

Now, it turns out there are two opposing camps on the vinegar issue. Some say this will fix the wispy whites problem. Others say avoid vinegar at all costs because of the risk of explosions. I recently tried adding a few drops of vinegar to the water in the saucepan. I’m ambivalent about it because I still got the wispys although the whites did seem a little firmer. But that’s probably only because I cooked them too long—again.

I think I have better luck putting the egg into a little bowl and then slipping the egg into the water in the saucepan. I do this very gently—always wear a helmet. Sometimes the white parts still scatter all over and even outside of the pan, covering the cooktop, getting all over the floor, flooding the dining room and clogging the electrical outlets. Hey, it’s time for corn flakes!

I don’t use ramekins, which sounds like sheep from another galaxy. I didn’t even know what those were until I looked it up on the web. They’re little bowls.

You can even buy an appliance called an egg poacher. They cost around $32 at Amazon. If I buy that, then I might as well buy an egg cracking tool. It’s called an EZ Cracker Handheld Egg Cracker and it costs $10.

You want perfect poached eggs? Look in the want ads under Poachers for Hire. Don’t call them if their ads show snapshots of wild animals.

KCCK Big Mo Blues Show

Tonight I heard this song on ‘da Friday Blues with John Heim aka Big Mo on KCCK and I thought I heard the lyric “Buckle up buttercup” and it didn’t make sense. Then Big Mo said it was “Pucker up buttercup.” It made sense then.

That’s called a mondegreen.

All About the Potato Salad

I recently got a checkup for my retinal tear surgery about 4 months ago. My surgeon was pleased with the outcome. Partly based on my good outcome, he shared that he was guiding his trainees on the wisdom of not necessarily always going with the new surgical procedures for the disorder, which happens not infrequently in those over the age of 50.

In fact, the trend seems to be to do more than just the oldest operation, which is the scleral buckle, in favor of adding vitrectomy as well—a relatively newer approach. I got the scleral buckle.

Progress is good. But just because something is old doesn’t mean it’s outmoded.

We saw the Iowa State Fair episode on old farm machinery the other night. It showed how much progress has been made in farming over many years. However, those old machines replaced a lot of hard labor, so they were definite improvements back in the day.

You can learn something new and valuable by considering what is old. We saw a short film called The Foursome. On the surface, it’s about 4 old guys who have played golf together at an annual tournament for 50 years in Waukon, Iowa. Waukon is in the Northwest part of the state, close to the Mississippi River, which borders the eastern side of the state.

The show is not really about golf, of course. But before it came on, I almost decided not to watch it because of that misconception. The description gives it away, saying that it’s about friendship, small towns, golf—and potato salad.

I think it’s also about getting older. Not everybody ages gracefully and I’m including myself as a pretty good example. I’m not so sure about my memory or my hearing these days. I can stand on one leg for 20 seconds. But one day not too long ago I cracked an egg and instead of emptying the contents into the poaching pan, I dumped them on a paper towel on the countertop. I was mortified.

Sena covered for me and brushed it off, saying it was because we had been talking about the finer points of poaching eggs and I just got distracted, and some hogwash about how she’s done that too. Maybe.

In the film, one of the Foursome was showing some of the artwork he has on the walls at his home. He stopped at one and seemed to fall into some kind of reverie. The camera operator had to sort of whisper to the guy that he needed to move on.

Let’s change the subject and talk about potato salad. They filmed the wife of one of the guys making this potato salad, the recipe for which you can get for free on the web. She used Miracle Whip instead of Mayonnaise. I pointed this out to Sena, who said nothing. Miracle Whip has been around since the 1930s and I grew up eating it on sandwiches at home. I favored it over Mayonnaise.

There has not been a jar of Miracle Whip in our house in almost 45 years—which is how long we’ve been married. I have learned to like Mayonnaise.

This reminds me of one segment on the film showing the wife of one of the other guys shopping for food (including burgers, chips, and whatnot as well as potato salad fixings) for the cookout, a part of the annual golf outing for the four guys. She said it really didn’t matter what she got because “They’ll eat anything you put in front of them.”

Some of them will eat nothing but the potato salad.

There is something poignant about the irascibility alternating with poignancy in the film. Their friendship is deep enough to move one of the four guys to tears. At least that’s what it looked like.

They have the usual flaws men have, including the tendency to be stoic in the face of oncoming frailty and the specter of death.

I don’t know if I’ll age as well as they do. But I do know I will never take up the game of golf. And I wonder if you can substitute Mayonnaise for Miracle Whip in that potato salad.

One thing I’m sure of, Sena is my best friend.

No Need to Shout, I Can Hear You

The FDA just announced their final ruling on improving access to hearing aids. You can read the final ruling itself, but by the time you finish it, you’ll be dead and won’t need a hearing aid.

Every time I fail to follow Sena’s directions, I remind her of how a loud rock concert ruined my hearing. It was a Rare Earth concert decades ago in my wasted youth. What do you mean you never heard of Rare Earth?

And if you believe that, I have some prime farm land in the Florida Everglades I can sell you where you can grow all the alligators you want. Prices are slashed literally to the bone of any extra limbs you don’t think you need.

Anyway, I think I do have some hearing loss. And it would be nice to be able to get hearing aids that work without spending an arm and a leg (unless you want to talk about a real estate deal in the Everglades; make me an offer!).

A lot of people who develop hearing loss have a lack of insight into the problem. I think that might be why so many of us at least have the impulse to say things like:

“Speak up!” “Why are you mumbling?” “Quit talking with your mouth full!”

Hearing loss can lead to misunderstandings which can sometimes be hilarious. It’s probably the reason for some mondegreens, which are mishearing words in song lyrics (“Excuse me, while I kiss this guy,” Jimi Hendrix—actually the lyric is “Excuse me while I kiss the sky”).

I’m not sure when hearing aids that are effective, safe, and affordable will be available. Maybe after the aliens finish their human-alien hybridization program, which will make talking unnecessary. We can just read each other’s thoughts. That’s actually scarier than having trouble hearing.

Iowa State Fair Musings

We’ve never actually been to the Iowa State Fair, but we really like listening to the Iowa Public Broadcasting TV shows about it.

The first show covered a lot of activities. Food at the Fair is always intriguing.  We know there are a lot of foods on a stick, but we didn’t know you could get a rattlesnake corn dog—with venom sauce! It’s pretty good according to the food guy, Travis Graven. You probably won’t find it in your local grocery store.

The big animals are impressive. I always wonder why the handlers sort of guide some of the animals (like that huge boar) using those little boards.

The lemonade stand was a little thought provoking. Dad’s Old-Fashioned Lemonade stand sellers aren’t out there to make money. They do it for the nostalgia. I’m sure they do it for the tradition as well.

That’s a nod to keeping tradition alive. One of those is the 4-H program. According to the Iowa State University 4-H Youth Development web page, the 4 H’s stand for:

Head for thinking, planning, and reasoning

Heart for being kind, true, and sympathetic

Hands for being useful, helpful, and skillful

Health for taking care of yourself and your community

The Iowa State Fair is a longstanding tradition. It started way back in 1854. It was on hold in 2020 because of the Covid-19 pandemic and that was the first time since World War II it was cancelled and only the sixth time in the Fair’s 166-year history.

A tradition is defined as the transmission of a culture’s customs, beliefs, knowledge, skills and more from generation to generation. In order to do that somebody has to do the passing down of all of that. And somebody has to pick it up.

You can store some of it in electronic archives, but a critically important part of it relies on institutional knowledge in the hearts and minds of the culture’s older people. It’s a two-way street; the young listen, accept some, and improve more if we’re lucky. It’s more than facts and figures—it’s the wisdom we want to preserve.

And we want to keep the rattlesnake corn dogs, with venom sauce.

Why Do We Want to Believe?

I heard a song called “Marfa Lights” on the KCCK 88.3 FM radio program, the Friday Night Blues Show with John Heim aka Big Mo. The lyrics mention the Marfa Lights, describing them as UFOs or flying saucers. It was the first time I ever heard a blues song mentioning UFOs.

I looked it up later on the web. It turns out there’s a town called Marfa in Texas where people see strange lights. Years ago (and maybe even nowadays) a lot of them think they might be UFOs or some other paranormal phenomenon, like ghosts. A couple of studies in 2004 and 2008 pretty much debunked them as automobile lights triggered by atmospheric changes like temperature inversions. Still, some people want to believe they’re something weird or cosmic.

On the same evening I heard the song, I watched an episode of Ancient Aliens which is one of those shows which has a paranormal theme, mostly involving aliens. They talked about a blind seer named Baba Vanga, whose predictions about the future are thought to be 80% accurate. The speculation by the hosts of the show is that Baba Vanga might have been tapping into a phenomenon called the Akashic Record.

Encyclopedia Britannica on the web says the Akashic Record is said to be a “…compendium of pictorial records, or ‘memories,’ of all events, actions, thoughts, and feelings that have occurred since the beginning of time.” (Britannica, The Editors of Encyclopaedia. “Akashic record”. Encyclopedia Britannica, 29 Jan. 2015, https://www.britannica.com/topic/Akashic-record. Accessed 13 August 2022.)

It’s not a physical thing, but it sounds like an ethereal public library. The Ancient Alien enthusiasts suggest that anyone can access it, even aliens (of course!)—if you have a current, valid library card and don’t have any overdue books or have at least paid up all the fines you owe.

In fact, there are a lot of entries on the web claiming you can access the Akashic Record just by formulating a clear question, like “What does Kellogg really put in those so-called all natural Kashi Granola Bars—and what exactly is Pyridoxine Hydrochloride anyway?”

Then you have to get into a pretty deep meditative state, which is nothing like mindfulness meditation. You need to ask really specific questions and insist on talking to the head librarian if you start to get the run around about certain resources being on reserve only for high-level professional mediums who charge outrageously high fees to search the record for you.

People want to believe. That’s why you can even find a WikiHow with detailed instructions for tapping into the Akashi Record to check out any of the episodes from the first season of the X-Files.

The Akashic Record might even have the Cliff Notes on what is going to happen to humans in the remote future. Ancient Aliens guys seem to spin this a couple of different ways.

One is a version of the matrix theory, which means that we’re living in some kind of computer simulation run by aliens who set this up with a special code or script that absolutely must be followed—meaning that the future is strictly determined. That would be bad because it sounds like it ends with a tremendous nuclear explosion on Mars, which humans eventually colonize but then can’t get along with each other because there are not enough rib joints for both humans and aliens.

The other future scenario is that humans evolve into beings who can tolerate indefinitely prolonged deep space exploration and go planet-hopping for the rest of eternity looking for Douglas Adams’ restaurant at the end of the universe. Forget getting in if you don’t have a reservation.

Maybe the question for the Akashic Record keepers should be pretty basic.

Why do we want so hard to believe?