I Wonder How Much It Took to Insure a Safe Flight? 

    
    An 80-year old woman chucked some coins into the engine of an Airbus 320 before boarding. She was soliciting good luck from whoever she thought was in charge of meting out luck to people flying on Southern China air. Maybe she knew something of which the rest of the passengers weren’t aware. 
    The report said nothing about whether this is a common practice or not. Unless Southern China is covering up the stories and statistics I’m guessing that this is sort of an isolated case. Otherwise it would be sort of hard on business. I mean Chinese people are as interested in self-preservation as anyone else. 
    One question is, how did this lady get close enough to an engine so that she could toss coins into the thing. Now an Airbus 320 is a sizable plane, so it takes a sizable airport, and you’d think that a sizable airport would have people boarding this large plane through an jetway. In which case you don’t even get to see an engine, let alone get close enough to chuck loose change into one. 
     Southern China did admit that the incident delayed the flight for several hours. Really! 

 And You Thought Monopoly Was Just a Game 

     Now this is something that could catch on. A man was pulled over on a routine traffic stop. The officer realized that the guy he had stopped was wanted on an outstanding warrant for a controlled substance problem. The driver knew he was in trouble so to avoid arrest he whipped out and offered to the officer a Monopoly “Get Out of Jail Free” card. Nice try. He didn’t seem to be really surprised when it didn’t work. 
    I could see all of us carrying around Monopoly cards and money, using whichever was appropriate at any given time. Just maybe we would find ourselves dealing with someone who wasn’t paying as much attention as this traffic cop. 
    But I have one question. Who in the world carries around a “Get Out of Jail Free” card anyway?”

Why Did They Quit? 

    Whatever happened to the spectator sport of aliens abducting earthlings and taking them up into space ships, and doing probings and experiments and then letting them go? It dawned on me a couple days ago that that activity has ceased, or at least we’re not hearing about it anymore, which I can’t really buy into as people seem to feel it necessary to tell us about everything else that is happening in their lives. 
    Two possible conclusions leap to mind.
    One: The aliens, being smarter than we are have tired of the sport, or they have gathered all the information they think they can get from running experiments on humans, so have moved to some other inhabited planet.
    Two: After seeing what we are really like, they have moved an expeditionary group here to live among us, realizing we wouldn’t know the difference. Now don’t laugh. It’s hard to watch the network news, or look at the internet’s news or social media, or walk down the street of any large city and not conclude that some of these people have got to be from another planet. 
    So why should these aliens go to the bother of snatching people up into their vehicles, when they can live next door to us and study us at their leisure? This theory would explain things such as many of our politicians, many of what we call entertainment stars, and a few of our sports figures, just to name a few. 
    As for the probing’s and other experiments, it’s a little depressing to realize that these aliens think we’re such simple life forms that there is nothing more to learn from those processes.

The Iceman Cometh   

    What is it with motel/hotel ice buckets and the plastic liners that come with them. By including a plastic liner for their ice bucket the hotel immediately puts the idea into your head that the ice bucket is not sanitary. Right or wrong I’ve never questioned the fact that the ice bucket is filled with germs and any ice that touches the inside of the bucket should not be used for normal human consumption. I don’t, however, let this fact keep me from using ice that has been in contact with the bucket. My theory is that a few germs keeps the body on its toes, so to speak. But that’s another subject. Like I said, “normal human.” 
     And then there is the question of how sanitary the plastic liner is. It was probably made in some third-world disease-ridden environment by a manufacturer who was the low bidder for plastic ice bucket liners. He lowers his costs by hiring little kids, paying them very little, and offering them no sanitary amenities whatsoever. But I digress again. 
    The problem is that about ninety-nine percent of the time the plastic liner is not large enough to fit over the edge of the ice bucket, which is about the only way it can be filled. Either the hotel management does not have a clue as to how big their buckets are, or they’re just too cheap to buy a larger liner. 
    The result of this conundrum is that when you go to dump some ice in the bucket the ice just crushes the bag to the bottom of the bucket making it worthless. 
    So, what does the hotel expect their guests to do? Try to hold only the bag under the ice-machine spout, them put the filled bag in the bucket? Well, good luck with that.     Or maybe the impossible scenario they present us with is to discourage us from using their ice in the first place. Yet another misguided money saving idea. 
    So, what’s the solution? How about carrying your own ice-bucket liners, say like a Ziplock freezer bag. You’re welcome.

Here We Go Again 

    Headline by Ben Hooper reads: 

    Man held 'hostage' by car-blocking turkeys in Georgia 

    I don’t understand this---you have two turkeys, each weighing maybe forty pounds and then you have a man, in an automobile, with a combined weight of probably 2000 pounds. And this man has to call for help because the turkeys will not let him pass? 
    Now, what’s wrong with this picture? I don’t care how militant or pumped up these turkeys are, they will move when something weighing 2000 pounds and is forty times their size pushes up against their little pea-sized brains. 

 Leave the Sideburns A Little Longer This Time

   Ben Hooper is again reporting, and this time about the strange goings on in a Virginia neighborhood. Somebody is shaving cats. That’s right, removing the fur from cats. These cats are not completely shaved, but just portions of them. 
   These cats are ones that are out wandering around the neighborhood. The police captain says it appears that the shaver is using some kind of razor. That would certainly be easier than using, say, a butter knife. 
    From the report, it’s hard to tell whether the cats or the owners are the most upset. Example: "It hurts, because she can't tell me. I know it probably hurt her, probably not physically, but mentally that has to be really hard on her. She doesn't want to be picked up anymore. She used to be really nice and you could pick her up and hold her and everything, and now she just doesn't want to be picked up anymore." 
    So far, no one has any idea what the motive might be for someone to do this. Now, cats prowling around a neighborhood can be somewhat of a nuisance, but shaving the poor darlings? Maybe painting them blue I could understand, but shaving seems a little over the top.

A Public Service Announcement 

    Some time ago a hunt organizer in Russia was hired to help the king of Spain shoot a bear. Evidently there was some concern about the success of the hunt, so they came up with a solution. First, they got a tame bear, then they fed him vodka-soaked honey until he was drunk. 
    When the time came, they pushed the bear out of his cage, and the King shot it. And surprise, surprise, it only took one shot. He was probably able to hold the gun right up against the bear. 
    Now for the public service announcement: If someone feeds you vodka-soaked honey, then tries to push you out of a cage, don’t do it. It’s probably a trick. Remember the bear.