The Best of Blogs: 2009-2010 by Leslie Thompson (i love reading books .TXT) 📖

pants pockets.
"Where are you going?" I asked.
"I'm going to my room and lay down," Kwiss said wearily. "All these dads make my head hurt."

Home Alone

The first day of school is always a manic and bitter sweet time. And no first day is ever quite like the one which the youngest child is sent into the world and Pre-K. Many parents endure this milestone with tears, while others celebrate with margaritas. When I left my little man quietly and calmly taking in his surroundings, I found that I was confounded. For the first time in ten years, I was going to be alone. What was I going to do with myself?
Once I returned home, I stood in the middle of my quiet, empty house and wondered, "What now? What could I possibly do with 6 hours of pester free time? What could I accomplish?
Several things leaped out at me all at once. The carpet needs vacuuming and the kitchen floor needs scrubbing. There are juice and jelly stains on the kitchen wall just begging to be wiped clean. The bathrooms require straightening and wiping down. And there are at least three closets that need to be cleaned out before a poltergeist moves in and starts eating the children. Of course, I could sit down at my computer and work on the pair of novels I'd been plotting all summer.
Of course, there are errands to run too. I am now able to buy groceries in record time, now that I no longer have to explain why we don't need three pounds of chocolate, or run screaming through the store when one of my boys announces that he has to make poopie dirt. I could go to the gym and enjoy an aerobics class uninterrupted by pee-pee breaks and temper tantrums. It is now plausible that I could do volunteer work, or get a paying job.
Yeah, right.

The martians are coming!

Approximately 75 years ago. the radio broadcast of War of the Worlds sent its audience into a panic. Written, directed, and produced by Orson Wells, no one thought that the listening audience would believe that there was a Martian invasion of Earth had occurred. They thought that people would take it for what it was, entertainment. Three generations later, we laugh as we regale each other with stories about the panic our great-grandparents flew into, and we feel superior in our greater sophistication.
Don't break your arm patting yourself on the back. In a few decades, our great-grandchildren will be laughing at us, and recommending heavy medication. Here are two gems of idiotic gossip will have our descendants rolling in the aisles for generations.
Government Death Panels

This rumor surrounds Health Care Reformation. Basically, it claims that the government will set up a council who will decide which senior citizens are worthy of Medicaid benefits. Should some poor soul not meet the rigid standard, than the poor old coot will be left to die of whatever disease gets them first.
I don't know who the delusional freak show that started this one is, but clearly the dude is more interested in being on tv than the facts. Does this turkey actually expect me to believe that the men who run my government are stupid enough to propose such cruelty, much less turn it into law? That's a ridiculous notion, among the dumbest I've ever heard. Politicians are interested in exactly the same thing everyone else is; keeping their jobs. And they know that they aren't going to be able to do that (what with the untaxable incomes and perky benefits) if they let dear old granny drop dead of something stupid like a cold.
The Swine Flu shots will contain 5 times the mercury as regular inoculations

Well, at least no one will die of the swine flu. They'll go barking mad and die of mercury overdose before that happens. All kidding aside, I was so disgusted by this rumor when I heard it that I had a brain fart that lasted for hours. What threw me more than the rumor itself, was the fact that there are people who actually believed it! Never mind that there have been reports about the clinical trials on pregnant women and children, and that there have been no fatalities from it, by mercury poisoning or otherwise. Besides which, any pharmceutical company that produces inoculations with a high mercury content will quickly find themselves bankrupt and brought up on criminal charges.
The conclusions I made are not the result of weeks of research and interviews. They aren't the product of my highly developed mind. It is simple common sense, a virtue I am finding in diminishing supply in today's America. However, if you should choose to believe every tale of the strange and fantastic that comes your way, by all means believe it with all your heart. All you'll do is prove that Darwin was right after all.

Halloween

Halloween began some 2,000 years ago by the Celtic peoples of Ireland, U.K, and Northern France. In those early days, it was referred to as Samhain (Pronounced sow-in), and was observed on November 1rst as a new year festival and an effort to keep the dead in their graves and out of trouble. These festivities began October 31rst, with everyone extinguishing their hearth fires, and going a little bonky from there.
The days between the harvest and the first freeze was an anxious time for these guys, and they had a few things to be worried about. There was always a chance that the crops would get moldy (producing psychotic hallucinations in the populace) and the possibility that the neighbors would turn hostile and make off with all their food before burning the place to the ground. Then, just to add some spice to the paranoia they suffered from, the Celts decided that this was the perfect time for the dead to come back and cause all kinds of trouble for the living. So, they did what any self respecting pagan did. They made a serious effort to appease their absent-minded and morally ambiguous gods.
On October 31rst, the day when the boundaries of life and death were at their fuzziest, the Druids gathered the average Celtic villager to their town square/open field/convenient spot, and lit a big ole bonfire. The villagers brought forth sacrifices of crops and livestock and tossed it into the fire (or community pot, depending on where they lived). To make certain that those pesky dead people didn't cause any problems while the living were out having a good time, they donned creepy costumes of animal skins and heads to scare them off. Through out the night, they laughed, they danced, and they made merry, while the Druids made prayers and told fortunes. At sunrise, the Celts re-lit their home fores with embers from the bonfire before going to bed, feeling hung over and pleased that they'd managed to make the gods happy for the next year.
Then, those bothersome Romans showed up and started conquering everybody. By 43 A.D, they had almost every Celtic region subdued, and to make the locals feel better about it, added a few of their traditions to Samhain. The first was Feralia (Roman Memorial Day), which was also held in late October. The second was the festival of Pomona, goddess of fruit and trees. Her particular symbol was an apple, and so that fruit became a staple of Samhain and harvest festivals all over Europe. It is from those days that the tradition of bobbing for apples began (probably).
At some point around 800 A.D, the Christians decided to get involved. For years they had been trying to convert the troublesome and stubborn pagans to their faith, with little luck. The Pagans simply couldn't join up with a bunch of uptight monks, who couldn't see the value of keeping the dead in the ground where they belonged, and the joy of a really good bonfire blow-out. The monks finally caught on to this, and so they bent a little and combined pagan tradition with Christian beliefs. They declared October 31rst All-hallows Eve, and November 1rst All Saints' Day. Eventually, because the Church loves it when things happen in threes, they tossed in All Souls' Day on November 2nd. And so, a good time was had by all; minus the fortune telling and pagan worship, of course.
As the centuries rolled by, the practice or carving scary faces into vegetables and gourds to scare off demons became another way to decorate the family home. Adolescents who dressed up in costumes to vandalize their neighbors and frighten the dog evolved to something that was more often practiced by smaller children to be cute and have fun. Even the call of 'Trick or Treat' became less about extorting protection money from perfect strangers, and more about indulging strange costumed kids willy-nilly. And now, the adults are less afraid of ghosts and ghoulies, and far more interested in being the things that go bump in the night.

A wormhole to Tennesee

No one can get lost like me. I can leave the house, confidant of my destination with careful directions in hand, and still manage to find myself crossing the Tennessee border a half hour later. I don't know how this happens, it just does. When this occurs I am forced to pull over at a seedy roadside gas station, where a gap toothed attendant knows my name, and call my husband so he can guide me home. Then, for the next few weeks, my husband gets the joy of relating yet another amusing tale about how I got lost going south and wound up north in Tennessee.
I am convinced that my accidental trips to Chattanooga and Chickamauga Lake is the result of a traveling wormhole. I live in north west Georgia, in a small city a full hour south of Chattanooga, Tennessee. Most trips require that I get on the interstate and go south before getting off and taking long and winding roads to my goal. Inevitably, once I begin the last leg of what should have been a short errand, the wormhole swoops upon me and swallows me up, car and all. It always drops me in Tennessee, and I always arrive in thirty minutes, leaving me wondering what had just happened, and boggling the minds of any of my passengers.
Most recently, I once more encountered the wormhole on Marietta Highway in Canton, Ga. Last week, as I was helping out my brother, I found myself cruising up and down a five mile stretch in a desperate attempt to avoid getting sucked in and spat out a hundred miles from where I wanted to be. My flight lasted more than 45 minutes as I searched for my brother's address and fled the press of the strange phenomena pursuing me with cosmic malice. In the end victory was mine as I made a sharp left hand turn by the church, and sped down the narrow gravel road littered with rednecks.
If only I could learn to harness and control the power of this wormhole. Imagine the green benefits that could be discovered through study and use of phenom of quantum physics. There would be fewer carbon monoxide emissions from cars, and the use of fossil fuels would be diminished. Even better than significantly lowering my carbon footprint is the huge gobs of money I would make in the tourist industries.