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More of Chip's Odd Musings of Life

I carry a notepad in my pocket at all times, as one never knows when inspiration might hit. I am always seeing things that strike me as odd and I write them down. Most of these turn into articles for Maynardville.Com. Others are too small and can't be used for an article. Contrary to what many of you think, there are subjects that even I can't drag out for two pages. When I have enough of these I place them in a collection like this.

Dead?
For years my parents told me that I was making enough noise to wake the dead. This instilled in me the belief that should I make enough noise the dead would rise and walk around. This is not the case as I have tried several times. I have learned that trying this for long periods of time in a cemetery will indeed not raise the dead. It will however invoke the wrath of the police. So kids when your parents say stop that racket or you'll raise the dead, remember, they have the dead and the police confused.

Paper Rock Scissors
As everything else seems to have evolved from an earlier form I wondered about the game Paper Rock Scissors. Did early cavemen play Rock Rock Rock? Then did it evolve into Rock Rock Fire? Maybe after that came Rock Fire Club. Things like that just make me wonder.

Appleseed?
I remember back in school the teachers telling us the story of Johnny Appleseed. How he wandered through the valleys sewing appleseeds here and there. There is proof in all our apple trees that this man may have indeed visited our area. There are apple trees here and there as testimony to this man's good actions. And while he may have visited the area from time to time, it most certainly wasn't as frequently as Curtis Crabgrass.

Flyer!
If I were in charge of a firing squad I would say Ready...Aim...Flyer! Just to see who was paying attention. Anyone firing their gun upon the word flyer would obviously not have been paying attention. I would make this person sit out the next three shootings! This would make them listen

Haunting We Go
If I were a ghost I'd find better ways of making my presence known. No more rattling chains, slamming doors or knocking books off shelves. That's child's play! I'd stop up and overflow all the toilets!

Angry Mob
It seems to me that everyone wants to blame everything but themselves for all the world's ills. They blame guns for killing people, schools for turning out killers, TV for making our kids deviants. I guess it's just human nature to look for something else to blame for your problems. One day, when I look outside my house and see an angry mob carrying signs that say down with Chip. And when they start casting stones, I will realize they ran out of other things to blame and decided to blame me.

The Joneses
Why do we find it necessary to keep up with the Joneses? Who are these people anyway? If I lived on a desert island the Joneses would live on the next island. They'd probably have trees while my island was bare. Of course you just wouldn't be the "In" crowd without trees. But then again I could always swim over to the Joneses island one night and take their trees. What are they going to do call the police?

Stalking?
Anybody but me think Mary's Little Lamb may have been a stalker?

I Laugh At You
It must be hard to be a clown. No matter what you do everyone laughs and points. I know it hurts and I'm only a computer programmer. It'd be worse if I had to wear silly makeup too.

Doctor No?
I used to be afraid of doctors. When I was a kid I broke my arm and had to go to the doctor. I screamed and yelled but Mom made me go anyway. The doctor knew I was afraid and gave me this bit of wisdom. He said "Be glad you're not a horse, doctors shoot horses when they break their legs." I don't know what he was getting at, but I'm still afraid of doctors. I am however, glad not to be a horse.

Completeness
How does one become a complete idiot and how does that compare with a plain idiot? Is there an idiot's school somewhere? I suspect that there is because there couldn't be this many idiots around without some form of formal training. I strongly suspect it to be the same school that trains the TV weather people. I guess though, on the other side, the only thing worse than being a complete idiot, would be being an incomplete idiot. Can you think of any worse class to fail than Idiocy 101? How do you fail that? Get too many questions right?

Elephant Cemetery
I do not believe in the Elephant Burial Grounds. Scientist would have you believe that elephants years ago, upon realizing they were upon death, would trek to this valley, lay down and die. They back up their claim by the huge amounts of elephant bones found there. Well I'm sure that they found the bones, but did they consider it may have just been a bad neighborhood? Maybe a band of bad elephants lived there and lured the other elephants with promises of peanuts and such. Once lured there they were mugged and left for dead!

Bump Bump
No matter how picky I am I will always get the buggy with the bad wheel. It looks perfectly normal, but I will go through the store like my buggy is attached to a kangaroo. Bam bump bump I go up and down the aisles. Women don't really notice such things, but the men all look. They feel for me because they too have picked out such buggies. I figure if I'm ever in a car wreck and get wheeled into the emergency room, I'll be on the gurney with the square wheel.

Horse Power
People keep telling me that wild horses couldn't drag them away. Yet when I produce the wild horses and the rope, nobody wants to prove it. Yeah there are a lot of braggers out there.

Cloning
I am against cloning! I would never want myself cloned. I have a hard enough time looking in the mirror without it talking back. But since they're going to clone things anyway might I make a suggestion? Clone Salma Heyak! That way she could be in more movies and be twice as naked! But while we're on the subject, let's talk about gene splicing. This is where they take the genes of two organisms, splice them and thus create a whole new creature. I find this to be far more interesting! Yes, I have a suggestion for that too! I'd like to see a bird crossed with a piranha! Depending on how it goes we could either have feathered fish, or else dangerous meat eating birds. If it goes the second way, we'd have a lot less environmental nuts, and bird watchers. And who could argue the need for a bird that attacks bird watchers?

Grow Up
Well, I've finally decided what I want to be when I grow up. I know I told you all I wanted to be a garbage man or ditch digger, but reaching my thirty fourth year made me realize I needed to have some ambition in life. I have therefore decided that I want to be a thug. Not a slug like my wife thought I said, a thug. You know, beat people up and take their things, that sort of thing. Yeah I think there's a big opportunity in thuggery out there.

Crazy Hair
I spent the whole weekend doing nothing but laying on the couch watching TV. I ate hotdogs all weekend, didn't take a bath for two days and didn't wash my hair. This is a snow ritual for me, everytime it snows I do this. But my point is I woke up this morning with crazy hair. It was so weird sticking out in front. So I washed it and tried to blow it dry. I realized that my hair had taken a new shape and I couldn't change it. I'm telling you Moses couldn't have parted my hair this morning. Then I realized that I had used wallpaper paste instead of shampoo. Why to that put that stuff in squeeze tubes like shampoo anyway? I bet my wife went to work and told everyone she replaced my shampoo with wallpaper paste. She won't be so happy when I shave her head tonight in her sleep.

Alien Abduction
Why do we assume that when aliens come they will abduct us? Are we so sure that they will deem us the most intelligent of our planet's creatures? Personally I find squirrels more interesting than most people I have seen.

Horse Sense
I had a teacher in elementary school that started the year by saying she wanted to teach us horse sense that year. I owned three horses and had never determined either of the three to be geniuses. Oh they were basically smart but they still walked where they pooped. I figured I was at least twice as smart for never having stepped in my toilet. Well that teacher never really convinced me that horses were all that smart. Though, she did demonstrate that she was similar to at least one end of the horse.

Killers
Why is it all killers want to dump their victims bodies in the lake? I guess it's the most inopportune place for authorities to look. That's what I think all this beached whale stuff is about. I don't think they beach themselves. I think bad whales need to get rid of their victim's bodies and toss them on land. That way whale authorities might not discover them

Driver's Ed
I took drivers ed in school. My favorite part was driving the simulators (one girl in my class called them stimulators). We were told we were being graded and we had to try our best. I tried my best to run down each pedestrian on the screen, and even one day made out with the girl in the next simulator. After all they were simulated cars so I had to simulate making out in them. But my point is, I still passed. And what's worse, my insurance company gives me a discount for taking this class! Only in America!

MoooVE
For some reason I find it humorous to think that somewhere in the world a vegetarian has been trampled to death by a herd of cows.

Lottery
If I won the lottery is a subject I often sit and dream about. The other day, I was watching the news and saw where this woman won the lottery, and divorced her husband in hopes of keeping all her winnings. Well if I won the lottery, I wouldn't divorce my wife. Actually I only have one plan. I'd buy Maynardville, and fire everyone in the courthouse. Then I'd build a house right in the center of town. I'd of course rename the city something more appropriate, like Nowhere. Yes Nowhere Tennessee has a good ring to it. And if I build that house I could tell everyone I live in the middle of nowhere!

Dinosaurs
I guess I have to believe in dinosaurs people keep digging up bones. But one thing bothers me. Scientists keep saying that dinosaurs were lizards and evolved into the lizards of today. Now if a brontosaurus could evolve into something as small as a spring lizard I have a question. How come nobody has dug up any giant chickens? If everything evolved from something else, where are all the giant chicken bones buried?

For Sale
It always bothers me when I see a for sale sign in my neighbor's yard. No matter how bad they are, it will only get worse. The way my neighborhood is going I wouldn't be surprised to see a family of howler monkeys move in. And if you look next door and see your new neighbors unpacking spears and shrunken heads, most likely they may be headhunters. In that case it's probably best not to welcome them to the neighborhood with a cookout.

A Trophy
Never enjoyed hunting or even saw the sport in it. Why would I want to go out and shoot something like a deer? It can hardly defend itself against a gun so where is the danger or sport? And if you hunters are so brave, why do you hide in trees to shoot these animals? I can see only one reason to hunt. I'd like to shoot little animals and then stuff them for my den. I'd shoot a bunny and have it mounted. I'd tell the taxidermist to make it snarl and stand on its hind legs. Seeing my trophy in this state, would tell everyone that indeed I must have shot this bunny in self-defense. Maybe shoot a deer and have it stuffed and dressed in a hunters jacket! Standing on it's hind legs and holding a 12 gauge! Yeah that's what I'd do.

Inconvenience
If I owned a little store I'd call it an inconvenience store. I'd stock my shelves in no recognizable order, price everything twice as high as it should be, and sell stale bread. I'd only have one cash register and make people stand in line for an hour while I talked about old times with each customer. Yep that's what I'd do. Maybe someone has already taken my idea, I suspect this is the principle behind the convenience store, down on the corner. Mine would just be more appropriately named.

McCoy
I was recently going through my old highschool annuals with my wife, pointing out various old girlfriends that she never knew. Then I got to the M's and came across a girlfriend. Her name was McCoy and it just got me wondering. I have always wondered about the phrase "the real McCoy." What does that mean? I think I'll try to find this girl and ask her. I just wondered whether I had dated the real McCoy or a fake one.

Attack!
Does it bother anyone but me that we as a civilization developed steel before we created cardboard? If we had discovered cardboard first would the Knights of the Roundtable have been clad in paper armor?

Roadkill Again?
In my further studies of interesting things to do with roadkill I have come up with another. I want to take pictures of dead varmints on the road and make posters of them. The posters would say something like, "Have you seen this animal?" Then it would have a picture of the roadkilled animal. Below would be directions on how to find this animal for yourself.

Rich Chickens
If chickens had a lot of money I'd start my own business. I'd go into the travel business and sell tours of the other side of the road. I guess this replaces my original plan to sell them lipstick.

Magic Beads?
I wonder what ever happened to the Indian that sold Manhattan for a bag of beads? Did he get fired by his tribe for selling their homes for these shiny trinkets? Did he found the worlds first idiot's school? Most likely he was indeed fired by his tribe, and then hired by the Federal Government to broker future land deals.

It's in black and white
I have always been told that people dream in black and white. This seems odd to me but I can't disprove it. But I wonder, does this mean penguins dream in color?

Saloon Fun
If I were a bee and owned a bee saloon, I'd have an angry hour each day. Beer would be half price and I'd have people prod each bee into a frenzy. Then after angry hour all the drunken bees would be free to go forth and find something to sting. Not that I condone drunken flying.

Gremlins
My wife won't go along with this, but I have a plan. I'm going to get a flat screwdriver and sit it on the counter. Then I'm going to turn on the camcorder to record the screwdriver. Next I will go off in the bedroom and yell I need a flat screwdriver. Then I am quite sure I will have the first recorded evidence of screwdriver gremlins! You know, they're the ones that upon hearing the type screwdriver you need, turn every screwdriver you own into something else.