Third time I've started this post now...

And I just give up.

I had started to write all about the travails of the past couple of day's worth of computer kludgery, but I haven't been able to finish the posts due to CONTINUED computer freeze-ups brought on by our intranet's case of ill humor and our MIS guy who just walked in to use the phone, causing me to have to hit the panic button and close the program.

Yesterday was a killer, had to go in an delete a huge stack of old stuff, managed to mistakenly delete stuff I had been working on, got it back late in the afternoon, found out that in one of the many outages I hadn't saved my last changes, had to go in and frantically fix all the formatting and spelling stuff I had already fixed once, then go back and recreate about the last quarter of slides I had done prior to the Big Burp, finally got it all working, boss dropped by at 4:45 to look at it and luckily said 'burn it' and that was that. Whew.

Interspersed with all of that has been everything else I am supposed to do--got my other show done about the old Kress building, had our Pretty Police meeting yesterday morning, went to my friend's dad's funeral yesterday afternoon, had to go teach the high school kid's class last night (they actually have gotten progressively better throughout the quarter--almost as if they're listening!), and tried to keep up with the nice letters from all of you.

Seems like the "Real Southerner" list brought out a lot of latent Southernosity in folks--special thanks to Huw Raphael at Doxos, who proudly matches up well with the list and who spread it around to several of his LiveJournal friends. Hey, y'all, thanks for dropping by. Dr. Weevil's NASA engineer brother Steevil also sent along a message to say that the deal with navigating by non-existent landmarks is also common up Rhode Island way, in addition to here. Good thing Bugs Bunny never asked for directions around here--that left turn in Albuquerque would be the least of his trouble. (And would you Nueva Mexicans please change the spelling to "Albakerkie"! Or "Bob.") Speaking of the Land of Entrapment (all you hot shoes know of what I speak), I got a nice letter from Larry Anderson from over in Kudzu Acres--

I knew every item on the list and some others. After spending thirty years away from AL, I don't talk Southern so much, but I definitely understand it.

A few years ago, I brought a Hispanic friend down to Huntsvul on business. Before we left New Mexico, I told him how to understand Southern: "All one syllable words are pronounced with a minimum of three and complete sentences can be single words. For example: Jeet?"

Translated--"Did you eat?" To which the proper negative response is "Naw-joo?", translated--"No, did you?" Which is why 'English As A Second Language' classes around here work so very well. Finally, I got a good one from long-time normal person and Possumblog reader Barbara Manning--

I couldn't read this without thinking of a classic which was coined by a dear lifelong, friend and quintessential Southern Lady, with all the trimmings and graces of the Old South. We grew up together in a little NC village of 2000 - but our professional paths took us in totally different directions in life. After we retired, we were sitting on her beachfront deck one day, deep in one of our favorite discussion subjects: "Comparing US and THEM." The discussion ended with this comment from her: "The difference between a Southern Lady and a northern harridan is that a Southern Lady knows when and where it is appropriate to say motherf&*%#@."

THE DEVIL MADE ME SEND THIS TO YOU!!!!! But I've just never heard anything else that more succinctly explained the difference.

Nuff sed.

And how!

I have also managed to miss a whole string of interesting search requests which manage to drop confounded Googleers into the smoking tire dump which is Possumblog.

Just had a German visitor searching for porno powerpoint presentation. Hmmm. "Wow! Would ya look at those bullet points!" Sorry, nothing here like that. But danke shoen for dropping by anyway.

Next, a very disappointed person looking for marching bands capes in-stock. Unfortunately, due to space constraints and the large leak in the warehouse roof, the Possumblog Mining, Machinery and Band Supply Company no longer keeps capes in stock, although we can order anything you want at cost plus 5% and sales tax. We also have Mrs. Rodney Jean Jenson who is a whiz with thread and satin and can make anything if you just give her a picture.

The Possumblog Sports Department got the call on this one-- +"ultimate frisbee" +topless +pictures. Yep, I guess that nekkid Frisbee would be the ultimate, alright.

Sick, sick, sick--possum playing dead photo image. Look, how you get your kicks in private is your own business, Bub, but don't come around here looking to satify your odd little cravings.

Speaking of which, there's this one--winona ryder porcelain skin. You mean you can eat off of it?! Or maybe Danbury Mint will put out a nice commemorative plate.

One for the fans of Classicism--what michigan city was named for a greek fighter against the ...Against who!? The Spartans? The Trojans? The Persians? The Turks? The request string was truncated, yet thankfully the visitor managed to get a door leading to Possumblog, which is the repository of all knowledge, much like the ancient Library at Alexandria.

In this case, it is likely our poor reader is thinking of a very famous Greek fighter Spiro Koulaxizis, who fought in the Michigan Boxing Club Bantamweight Division against such noted boxers as Jim "The Cobbler" Thornton, Ned Bunder, Theodorus Juergens, and Gunter Turgidsson. His adopted home town of Bronsonville was so grateful for the acclaim that he brought to their town that they decided to honor him by renaming the town after him. A clerical error at the Michigan State Capitol resulted in the misspelling of his name as Kalamazoo on the bill which was presented before the Legislature and voted upon. Deciding it was not worth the trouble to petition the State House to correct the name, the town fathers were successful in persuading Koulaxizis to change his name to Detroit.

Finally, to catch us all up on Mrs. Hanji Sal, there sadly has been no further response from her since my last reply to her. Either she has gotten so tired of reeling me in that she decided to cut the line, or she figured out that I was having a bit of fun at her expense. Or maybe she's on her way with a big box of money! COEM ON MOENEY!!
posted by Terry at 10:23:00 AM