Guest Post: George says You Have to Buy the Gas

I went to WalMart this morning and bought a nice brushed chrome desk lamp to put beside my bed to replace the one that got knocked off by one of the cats.

This was made in China, and it only cost $9.97.  When I got home, I put a bulb in it and plugged it in, and it did not work.  I changed bulbs and it still did not work.  Pissed me off.

I’m taking it back tomorrow and exchange for another made in china that hopefully works.  I’ll make sure it works before I leave the store with it.

What really grinds my ass is that it’s a ten mile round trip, and that equates to about $3 in my huge, gas guzzling Ford Explosion.   So, the freaking lamp will end up costing me $16 — all things considered.

— George Poleczech

Guest Post: George says It Was Mis-Identification

Years ago I went to the supermarket breakfast section and ordered toast and butter for fifty-cents.  That day I was not particularly well groomed — in fact I was downright raunchy.  I was a man in his seventies.  My white beard was scraggly, my hair was unkempt, and I looked like I had dressed in a hurry in a burning house.  But I was hungry and not concerned about what people thought.

I was into my second slice of toast when I sensed a female figure standing nearby.  I lifted my eyes to behold a late middle-age woman with blue hair, nicely dressed.   I squinted — thinking that she wanted to canvass me for a donation to some liberal cause–for which I have a dozen practiced reasons whereby I can sensibly decline.   But this was not the case.

“Sir?”  She said, before I could speak.

“Yes, Ma’am?” I squeaked.

She extended a frail hand which held a half-folded five dollar bill.  “Sir, I give you this in the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth.”

I held back my embarrassed gasp and feigned humility — as I realized she had (mis)taken me for one of the homeless guys who begs at the intersection.

“Thank you, Ma’am,” I garbled, as I turned my eyes away and shyly took the bill.

“God bless you, Sir,” she said and quickly walked away.

“Goblusyoumam”, I mumbled to her quickly departing back.

I was both embarrassed and humbled.   And I vowed that in the future I would spiff up before venturing down for breakfast.  And it’s a good thing because I have since seen this good woman shopping with her grandchildren.  I purposely avoid their glances, but it is doubtful that she would recognize me anyway because I have since lost the beard.

My experience with mis-identification has not always been benevolent, as I was once mistaken for a marital interloper and got slammed between the eyes as I exited the men’s room at a local club.   I awoke with my tormentor applying wet toilet paper to my face and apologizing.

In a similar vein, Mr. Patel, who lives a block from me, is from India, and he works at WalMart five days a week.  He is a diligent worker, and when at work, he wears a white shirt and pleated slacks.  But at home he often prefers to drape himself in some variation of his native Hindu bedeckery.   One day he wore it to the Chinese restaurant for lunch, and somebody called him a Muslim.

This morning at WalMart he told me about it and complained.   I jokingly said he ought to wear a sign.   His hot response produced a dab of spittle on his lip–which I did not understand and could not spell if I had.

There is a moral to this story:  Don’t judge people by how they look.   Judge them by how they vote.

– George Poleczech

Guest Post: George says Today is *F* Day

“F” can stand for a lot of things to different people–depending on where their mind is.

As a Morse Radio intercept operator in the military, we learned the code by associating the cadence of the dots and dashes of the letters in the alphabet to the cadence of ordinary phrases.

For example, to someone familiar with Morse code charts, “F” is written as dot dot dash dot. But experienced radio men do not use dots and dashes in their lingo. They use dits and dahs to stand for dots and dashes. So, from experienced lips, it would seem that “F” would be spoken as dit dit dah dit. But not so . Here’s why:

You see, in true radio lingo, when two consecutive dits are used to make part of the coded for a particular letter, they are not sounded as separate, single-syllable words, but are combined into one double-syllable word, and sounded out as “ditty”. So, dit dit becomes “ditty” when spoken.

Therefore, when “F” (dit dit dah dit)is articulated in experienced Morse lingo, as ditty dah dit, with the first two dits expressed as ditty, and final dit being expressed singularly as “dit”: “ditty dah dit”. See how simple that is?

Here’s where it gets funny:

As I said above, operators learn the code by associating the combined sounds of the dits and dahs in individual letters with the sound of ordinary phrases. An example: “N” in code is dah dit, and students learn that N–in code–sounds like “Got It”. (Geddit? Dah Dit, Got It). Okay…

Yes, every letter in the alphabet, when converted to Morse Code, has a similarly sounding phrase attached to it for learning purposes. For example, “Q” is, dah dah dit dah, or “Pay Day today”.

Believe it or not, this is the system that military radio schools use to teach young men and women how to recognize the sounds of dits and dahs of Morse Code and to be abe to slap the words down on paper.

And this brings me back to “F” day, and the subject of this message: Remember, “F” is ditty-dah-dit. And ditty dah dit sound like… (and you’re gonna just crap when you hear this)…in learning lingo, ditty dah dit sounds like “get a haircut”. So, today is the day I have to go get a haircut.

BTW, Beau Pinder (North Puffin’s mayor and general roue)’s initials are BP.

“B” is dah-dit-dit-dit, or dah ditty dit. In learning lingo, dah ditty dit sounds like “Big Chickenshit”. but it gets better:

“P” is sounded out as dit dah dah dit, or “The Girls Love it.”

Hasn’t this been an interesting message?

— George Poleczech

George’s Rant

It is too bad you don’t have a blog heading captioned as:  GEORGE’S RANT.  If you did, it would give me a chance to… well, to rant.  So, let me do it anyway.

A month ago I went to Sam’s Club Courtesy Booth (a misnomer) and signed up for a Sam’s Club Discover Card that would give me a 2% discount on all purchases–both at Sam’s and at other businesses as well.

The card never came in the mail, and Mrs George admonished me to call and cancel the application and ask for a new one in order to preclude getting my account hacked by anyone who might have filched the card and used it.  I did so.

It took ten minutes to navigate the Sam’s Club Credit dept telephone tree of options; but I hung in there and finally got a real, live human voice who took care of the paperwork and got me lined out to receive another card — with a new acct number — in the mail.

However, when I drove to Sam’s Club an hour later and tried to buy something, they informed me that my membership had been cancelled.  That wasn’t part of the deal.

I had a cart full of groceries, which I had to leave aside while I went *up front* and pled my case.  They eyed me suspiciously and gave me a temp Sam’s card; and, of course, they misspelled my name. They spelled it Polachek — like it sounds.

I called Mrs George from my *made-in China* cellular phone and told her to open the pub so I would be able to unwind when I got home.  She told me to drive slowly and hold off until after twelve because we have a house rule against drinking before noon.

<END OF RANT>

— George