Tag: humor

What’s Up with the Van Meter Iowa Visitor?

OK, so last night I watched Don Wildman’s Van Meter Visitor (supposedly a mysterious Van Meter, Iowa cryptid) episode first seen over 100 years) from his show Beyond the Unknown. The season 3 episode first aired in October 9, 2021, and I’d never seen it before.  

Wildman said that somebody investigated the history of this creature who was spotted in 1903 in Van Meter, Iowa and concluded that the 8-foot-tall monster with a huge shining beak was actually a great hornbill—a pretty big bird but hardly 8 foot tall (more like 3-4 foot).

Supposedly, according to some experts, this big bird escaped from an exotic pet enthusiast. It’s never seen in America and is native to India or Southeast Asia.

I can’t find anything on line that says anything about this explanation. By most accounts, the Van Meter Visitor is a cryptid that is unexplained to this day. I think there’s still an annual festival for it in Van Meter.

The cast of Expedition X (season 4, episode 2) also did a TV episode about the Van Meter Visitor on September 9, 2021. I might have seen it, but I don’t remember the conclusion. I’m pretty sure the team didn’t think it was just a big bird. I don’t know why the Expedition X episode appeared about the same time as the Beyond the Unknown episode. Maybe Don Wildman and Josh Gates joked about the Van Meter monster over lunch one day and decided they’d both do a show about it.

Hey, I’m open to the great hornbill explanation, but so far, I can’t find any links to web articles that agree with it. Heck, even AI says “There is no connection between the great hornbill and the Van Meter Visitor.” I didn’t ask AI; it just pipes up because I can’t block it.

If any readers know about the great hornbill explanation for the Van Meter Visitor, drop a comment!

Jim Does the Bath Sponge Demo!

Just like Sena talked me into letting her do a facial on me, I had to do the bath sponge thing. This product is called Scrubzz, a soap generating rinse-free bath sponge you can wash up advertised as “no rinse, no bathing, and no sticky residue.

I could beg to differ on the no sticky residue claim, but it might be just quibbling. If you don’t shave for a day or two, you might get something you could legally call “residue” because the polyester fibers will get caught in your stubble. Remember that if you try to shampoo your hair with it.

It has a lavender scent, which I could live without, but other than that the bath sponge works OK. You just add water to a single cloth and you’re bathing without the need to rinse. Towel dry and you’re done. You get 25 cloths to a pack.

We could have used these when our water heater went out a few years ago. Cold showers are no fun.

Upcoming Svengoolie Movie: “Them!”

Svengoolie Intro: “Calling all stations! Clear the air lanes! Clear all air lanes for the big broadcast!”

This big broadcast is about the upcoming Svengoolie show movie, “Them!” on October 11, 2025 at 7:00 p.m. One problem I have with this schedule is that the Iowa Hawkeye vs. Wisconsin Badgers football game starts at 6:00 p.m. on the same day. This happened previously with another Svengoolie movie last month, “The Bad Seed,” and I got around it by watching the movie on the Internet Archive. I may have to do that again.

Anyway, “Them!” is a 1954 classic atomic bomb testing leading to giant creatures film (in this case ants) terrorizing the desert southwest countryside. James Arness (who plays FBI agent Robert Graham although Arness starred as Marshal Matt Dillon in Gunsmoke a year later) who has run afoul with then FBI director J. Edgar Hoover and heads to a New Mexico field office because he wanted to investigate the Mafia but Hoover didn’t think that gang existed, leading to Dillon’s famous quote heard around the world in many languages, “I gotta get outta Dodge!” As happens repeatedly in the 1950s, radiation-exposed insects grow to gigantic size, in this case ants who beat the living daylights out of grasshoppers running a protection racket on them for food (so much for Hoover’s dismissal of organized crime!) and in their headlong search for Insectopia, where the streets are lined with picnic baskets, trample on a tiny guy in a weird suit who is incredibly strong who charges the once oppressed lower class ants huge sums of money to defend them against the superior race of ants who have larger mandibles and shake down the lower class ants (leading agent Graham to write a letter to J. Edgar Hoover saying “That is why you fail!” which is yet another famous quote parroted by middle schoolers everywhere).

OK, so that’s not exactly how the movie goes, but I’ve never seen it so how should I know?

A Flick on Fall Flickers

Today, as usual, we had to interrupt our cribbage game so Sena could capture video of all the birds in our backyard, the fall colors, and whatnot.

She caught some shots of Northern Flickers, which she has not seen before although I can remember catching them on camera years ago. They’re really strikingly colored birds and you can easily distinguish female from male birds.

The males have a black mark next to their bills which is called a mustache, which the females don’t have. They don’t migrate and you can see them all year round.

Sena was slinging the camera around and hurrying from window to window to get the best shots. She accidentally caught me on camera. I threw a still shot of it in the video just for laughs.

We saw a bird we didn’t recognize at first mostly because it was small and preening with its back to us. It had a red breast, so it was probably a young robin. Our luck, it’ll try to attack our windows next spring, although Sena put up some window film which may prevent that—we hope.

The fall colors are relaxing. The squirrel reminded me of Dug the dog in the Disney Pixar movie Up. I would have stuck a picture of Dug in the video but it’s copyrighted.

By the way, I won the cribbage game today. It happens.

Music Credit for YouTube video:

Carefree Melody by Twin Musicom is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Source: http://www.twinmusicom.org/song/302/carefree-melody

Artist: http://www.twinmusicom.org

Learning to Use the Komati Basin Water Authority  (KOBWA) Egg Flipper!

I’ll deal with the silly KOBWA acronym later. Sena bought some new kitchen utensils and she got these egg flippers (one red and one black). They’re supposed to make it easier to flip fried eggs. I think a regular person who knows how get around a kitchen would do better than I did this morning to handle this tool.

On the other hand, I think I have a legitimate point to make about the egg flipper. I usually break yolks when I try to flip eggs, so they end up not looking pretty.

The egg flipper is a combination of a spatula and tongs. The tong set is above the spatula and you just squeeze the flexible handle to close them over the egg when you’re ready to flip them over.

I’m not sure how to make sure the yolk is out of the way. I hope others besides me notice that unless you position this instrument just right, you’d end up with crushed yolks. This doesn’t make much of a difference to me because I usually find a way to crush the yolks anyhow.

Sena found an interesting article about the inventor of the spatula, although I didn’t actually see that one; she just mentioned it. I think I found it later, though. The writer often doesn’t get credit for the original article but wrote another article in which he says his first one is often misquoted and leaves out his byline. His name is George Billions. For what it’s worth, the line under his name on his blog says “writes fiction and other lies.” Just sayin’.

There was one comment on Billion’s’ original article who requested a reference to support what he wrote about John Spaduala. For complicated reasons, a reference is hard to come by, and I think I’ll just add a reference to Billions’ article out of respect:

“John Spaduala: Inventor of the Spatula.” Spatula Planet. Spatula Planet, 3 Feb. 2014. Web. 10 Feb. 2014.

I don’t know why he calls himself Mike because the name of his blog is George Billions.

I don’t usually pay much attention to Artificial Intelligence (AI) from the internet, but sometimes they are too intrusive to ignore. AI essentially says there was no such person as John Spaduala and that the story is a recurring anecdote. It’s an urban legend.

What lends weight to the AI judgment is a web article purporting to be an interview with John Spaduala himself, even though the guy lived in the 19th century and the interview was conducted in 2017 by Jason Denness who entitled it “Fake Interview: John Spadula.” Denness thanks George Billions for being the “victim of this interview.” While Denness credits George Billions by saying “He is the creation of John Spaduala…” I suspect that’s a typo and maybe what he meant was that Billions is the “creator” of John Spaduala.

That said, the question is who invented the egg flipper? It wasn’t John Spaduala. Technically, even though I have no right to make any judgments about this, there might not be any specific person identified as the inventor of the egg flipper. As near as I can tell, a spatula can be a “turner,” (also called a flipper) but a turner isn’t necessarily a spatula.

The name or acronym applied is KOBWA, which I suspect is not the inventor’s name, but the name of the company that markets the egg flipper spatula. The only thing I found on my admittedly cursory search is the Komati Basin Water Authority, which has no connection to any kitchen utensil. You can find kitchen gadgets with the name Kobwa (or KOBWA), though. However, there are other weird trademark related names for the egg flipper as well. I don’t know why.

I’m pretty sure they weren’t invented by any descendants of John Spaduala—if he had any. You’re welcome.

Dealing with an Adjustable Fanny Pack Strap

I’m waiting for delivery of my case, protector screen, and holster clip for my new smartphone. It’s taking a while and I need a safe way to carry my phone. So, Sena got me a fanny pack.

I’ve never had to deal with a fanny pack strap, but since it’ll be a few weeks for my stuff to be delivered, I had to cope with the adjustable strap. Believe it or not there’s a couple of YouTube videos that show how to put things into the pouch—but no videos demonstrating how to adjust the strap.

I’ve never had to cope with a fanny pack strap, but I think I figured it out. I made a video. See what you think.

Upcoming Svengoolie Movie: “The Ghost and Mr. Chicken”

Svengoolie Intro: “Calling all stations! Clear the air lanes! Clear all air lanes for the big broadcast.”

This coming Saturday, Svengoolie will show the 1966 comedy horror film “The Ghost and Mr. Chicken.” I think it’s pretty good and Sena likes the movie too.

I’ve seen this film before at least once and I thought one of the times was on the Svengoolie show. But you’d think I’d have blogged about it. I can’t find any posts about it, though.

The gist of it is that Luther Heggs (Don Knotts) is a typesetter for a small-town newspaper and gets into a position in which he has to solve a murder mystery. It entails spending some time in a haunted house. He’s chicken-livered but perseveres (“Attaboy, Luther!”). He has to nip it in the bud.

If you ever watched The Andy Griffith Show, then you’ll recognize the comedy antics of Barney Fife in this movie (“These hands are like steel!”).

Sena Hates Her New Smartphone!

Since we’ve gotten new smartphones, we’ve been working on getting up to speed on how to use them. More often they seem to be using us.

In fact, Sena is pretty bummed about how much fiddling around with a smartphone you have to do. She used a little flip phone for years and this is a big upgrade (she would say “downgrade”) for her.

Zuckerberg wants to replace smartphones with Artificial Intelligence (AI) glasses. Sena tells me Bill Gates has been talking about replacing them with electronic tattoos.

That reminds me of a 1997 X-Files episode I don’t remember seeing called “Never Again.” Some guy gets a tattoo on his arm of a girl with the words “Never Again” under it. It starts talking to him and making him do crazy things, like buying mobile phones priced around $1,000, which is about what they cost back in 1997. Smartphones cost about the same these days.

Is that how electronic tattoos would work? Or would they just send mind control messages telling you to buy more of the same stocks in Bill Gates’ portfolio?

There are a plethora of new ads and promotional messages that we’ve never seen before:

Buy new armpit removal tool for half-price!

Upgrade to AI-assisted fruitcake recipe idea generating protocol!

Install planet construction and combustion instructions now!

I’m thinking we’ll Never Again purchase new smartphones.

Svengoolie Show Movie: “The Night Strangler”

I saw the 1973 made for TV movie “The Night Strangler” directed by Dan Curtis and starring Darrin McGavin as the investigative reporter Carl Kolchak. I’ve never seen the first Kolchak movie, “The Night Stalker.”

The gist of The Night Strangler plot is that some guy in Seattle is strangling women and getting a little blood from them. People are scared; Kolchak is putting clues together with a lot of help from a local newspaper archivist researcher Titus Berry (Wally Cox) while local police as well as Kolchak’s editor, Tony Vincenzo (Simon Oakland) spend a lot of time yelling at Kolchak—which just provokes him to yell back. Eventually Kolchak irritates everybody so much they all just haul him up to the top of the Space Needle and toss him through a window. He happens to land on top of the first of 6 belly dancers killed by the strangler.

She’s as white as a sheet, dead as a doornail and has decayed flesh around her neck. She’s so anemic as to be white as a fish belly though the coroner finds that only a few drops of blood were drained from her neck.

And that really gets Kolchak started. He’s an extremely annoying reporter who doesn’t take “no” for an answer from anybody, even the owner of the Pink Elephant car wash who refuses to let him run his old jalopy through it for free.

Kolchak always wears the same dingy suit no matter how many times he gets thrown from the Space Needle and ignores everybody who insists he have the suit dry-cleaned.

He takes pictures of cops being thrown around like rag dolls in an alley (not Post Alley where the Gum Wall is) by a bull strong man who apparently can also dodge speeding police cruisers like a running back.

However, the police confiscate Kolchak’s camera and put enough obstacles in his way to make me wonder if they’re in cahoots with the strangler who it turns out is also leading tours of the legendary Seattle underground and would give free tours to the cops who can get free box lunches from an old diner where human skeletons throw fish around just like they do at Pike’s Place Fish Market while letting rats crawl through their eye sockets.

Kolchak gets valuable insights from an old crone named Professor Crabwell (Margaret Hamilton, who also played the wicked witch in the Wizard of Oz) about a youth preserving potion that the strangler might be making—and just when she gets to the good part, a house drops on top of her.

When Kolchak and a brave belly dancer (who is beginning to dislike him as much as everyone else does) get to the underground, he tells her to give him about 30 minutes before she calls the cops to come and rescue him. How does he know he can hold off the strangler for longer than 30 seconds?

The ending is pretty good, mainly because you know you won’t have to listen to Kolchak anymore. I’ll give it a 3 shrilling chicken rating.

Shrilling Chicken Rating 3/5

We Finally Got New Phones

Well, we finally got new phones after several years. I think we bought the old ones from Fred Flintstone. I probably should have got a new phone after the battery swelled up in it so big it was starting to split the case. That was over 5 years ago. I have an iPhone 17 Pro now.

Sena’s always had a flip phone. She got one that still folds up, but it’s a lot nicer. It’s a Galaxy Z Flip7.

I think these phones have a feature that allows you to call extraterrestrials to order pizza. Don’t ask for extra cheese.

I remember we got along OK without portable phones at all for years until a big snowstorm made the streets impassable and I decided I had to sleep in my chair in my office at the hospital. We had only one car. I tried to call Sena to warn her not to drive in the snowstorm, but she’d already left to come pick me up. She got stuck on the way but managed to get unstuck and drove back home. I had no way to get a hold of her while she was out on the road.

We both got flip phones after that. I later got an iPhone triple zero, which ran OK most of the time on diesel. One of the residents talked me into buying one. It was a lesson in evolution. I guess we’re still evolving.