by Richard Timothy | Sep 20, 2010 | I Think There's a Point, My Cutie Baby Sweetie Pie, My List of Things that Don't Suck, Non-Fiction, Observationally Speaking
Ears are interesting things. Not necessarily because of their size and shape, and how proportional they are to your head, even though all of those to play an important role in how much you were teased as a child and is a motivational factor in whether or not you grow your hair long or not. What I am referring to the how our ears emotionally identify certain sounds and the power those sounds have to created a positive or negative reaction in us.
It was at a birthday party this past weekend and was reminded of one of my favorite sounds. The thing is I use to make this sound all the time growing up. It’s a relatively simple sound to make, one that I imagine we all enjoyed making in our youth and even during early infancy when we learned that fingers could be used to make a collection of noises when applied to your mouth. What could this sound of delight be? It’s the popping sound you can make as finger slides out of your mouth while it is pressing on the inside of one of your cheek.
To make this sound I highly recommend you wash your hands first. Hands are mischievous things that have a tendency to go places and touch things that not even a hand should touch. After washing your hands… you know, you might want to brush your teeth as well. At the very least I’d suggest gargling with some mouth wash. This, however, is dependent on if and what you have recently eaten. Once your hands and mouth are both properly sanitized for some friendly interaction, open your mouth and insert your index finger pressing it firmly against the inside of the cheek or your choice. Note: you will want to use a left to right system for this, i.e. if you use your right index finger, press it against the inside or your left cheek. Close your mouth around your finger so that no air can escape out of your mouth and then breathe out so that your mouth fills with air. As the pressure builds up, slide your finger along the side of your cheek and out of your mouth. As your finger exits, your mouth will make a loud popping noise.
There is another way to make this noise, which does not include any fingers in any mouths, and it is in this context that this sound that brings a smile to my face every time I hear it. It’s the popping sound a cork makes as it is removed from a new bottle of wine. Whenever I pull out a cork from a newly opened wine bottle that sound hits me in the face like a cream pie of pure joy. I’ll bet that anytime Dionysus makes a trumpeted entrance into Mount Olympus the horn section is a symphony of the cork popping sounds. It truly is one of my favorite euphoric sounds. And it is for that reason alone that I hope the screw top bottles in the wine world remain more minimal as opposed to becoming a standard.
Some other noises I love, that always put a smile on my face:
- The knock at the door when I am expecting friends to visit. I hear that knock and know who it is. I can’t help but smile as I walk up to the door to let them in.
- The sound of my sweetie-baby-cutie-pie laughing. Especially when I am in my office working and I can hear her downstairs laughing at something she is watching on the television… or YouTube. Her laugh is very infectious and fills me full of smiles.
- The song Glósóli by Sigur Ros, and even though I have no idea about what the song means (because it is performed in a foreign language) it always gets me smiley and feeling better about life, the universe, and everything.
Now to give a little yang to this yin topic… or is it the other way around? Either way, I figured it would only be fair if I offered a handful of sounds at make me my skin crawl, my teeth clinch, and the desire to have the connection from my ears to my brain to be severed. These sounds include:
- Frost being scrapped off of car windshields while I am sitting inside the car. Oddly, if I am the one outside scrapping of the windshield, I have no problem with the sound, but if I am sitting in the car and someone else is scrapping, I have turn up the heater and car stereo, and to stick my fingers in my ears to try to drown out the sound.
- Adults’ using baby-talk while conversing with other adults. This creates a very spontaneous and unrelenting desire to slap these adults in the face until they stops. I’m all for mimicking babies in their underdeveloped oratory as an attempt to get them to smile or giggle, or as a deterrent to get them to stop crying. When adults, actually let’s make that anyone older than three, starts using a baby-talk voice to ask for anything, everyone in ear shot is going to want to beat you until you promise never to talk like that again.
- The knock at the door when I have someone coming over that I am not particularly fond of. I hear the knock and I know who it is. I always have to try really hard to put a smile on my face as I walk up to the door to let them in.
- Radio commercials that use car horns in their commercial. I have, on more than one occasion, discovered that my middle finger becomes loaded and is ready to go off at a moment’s notice as a result of radio commercials honking at me during my drive to work. Freaks me out more often than not… between those commercials and the tedium of morning radio DJ’s I’ve pretty much stopped listening to the radio altogether.
The thing about euphoric sounds is its all relative, and no I’m not talking about any of my cousins… but then again, you might… I could go back to that door knocking experience with people at your door that you don’t want there. Well there you have it some of my yin sounds and yang noises.
What are some of your sounds that bring either joy or grumpiness… or some variety therein?
Image Sources:
Google Images, keywords: big ears, mouth popping sound, opening wine, scraping ice, and joy.
by Richard Timothy | Sep 17, 2010 | I Think There's a Point, Life Characters, My List of Things that Don't Suck, Non-Fiction, Observationally Speaking
It happened overnight, my brother’s bank account went from a couple hundred dollars to over a million in the blink of an eye. How did he do it? Well, let me tell you…
My brother came into his million dollars when living in Jackson Wyoming, which only just recently changed. My friend Ans and I would dream, scheme and plot about ways to get him out of Jackson. It’s not so much we were opposed to Jackson; we were just opposed to him living there. I mean sure I enjoy visiting there, but I’d never want to live there, it’s just not a good fit and it certainly wasn’t a good fit for Dave. At least it wasn’t in our minds. Turns out the only motivation he needed was, instead of our constant verbal pestering for him to move, a significant other that refused to live there.
Dave is a rather clever sort, and was always hatching up new ideas for how he could make some extra money. It was after work, during one of these planning sessions, that he found himself a bit peckish and wanted to get something to eat. He headed down town and hit the local ATM to grab some cash for a late lunch. As his receipt rolled out of the ATM, looking much like an R2 unit attempting to stick out its tongue, Dave looked at the printed balance at the bottom of the sheet to see how much cash he had left until pay day.
He looked at the number. He blinked and looked at the number. Then did a series of extreme blinks and head shakes in much the same manner as someone who has attempted to see how long they can start at the sun and was not attempting to get their eyes to adjust so they could see the world again. As he looked back at the paper next to the words Account Balance was a little over one million dollars. He knew something was amiss, he hoped it wasn’t, but knew better. So he went home, pulled close the blinds, you know, just in case. And in an act of positive mental reinforcement started to compose a list of all the things he would do if the money in his account turned out to actually be his. He decided to give it a few days before checking it again, figuring that if the bank made an error they would be able to easily correct it in a few days time.
Relativity is a funny thing, you know that whole spending 30 minutes at the DMV (Department of Motor Vehicles) feeling like hours… ok not the best example, because seriously whoever gets out of the DMV in 30 minutes. For me it’s more like visiting the a natural history museum, I can spend hours there and it seems like only minutes, and my wife can spend minutes there and it feels like hours and hours (sigh, adult women and their lack of dinosaur bone appreciation). The thing about relativity is that if you add enough alcohol to the equation, it doesn’t matter how long you spend at a place or in a situation, you still won’t remember it in the morning. However, even though Dave has for few drinks, which were hastily consumed, the weekend still crawled by one minute at a time.
After the fourth day Dave checked the balance again. The balance had not changed. My brother was a officially a millionaire… until…
Dave entered the bank, waited in line until a teller was available, and then began to explain the situation. As his explanation progressed, a look of growing concern began chiseling away at the teller’s face with much the same intensity as the French did using their iron balls to blow the nose off of statues of dead Egyptian royalty. She didn’t get shot at, but it was clear that whoever had created this little blunder was probably going to be looking for a new job the second blame was attached and she was hoping it wasn’t her.
Soon Dave was in the bank managers office telling the story once again as people hurriedly walked in and out of the office, to explain their research on the matter and trying to find someone to blame that wasn’t them. Eventually, they discovered what happened. Turned out Dave’s account number was identical to the school districts account number, except for one digit, which I know doesn’t make it identical, but, well, mostly identical then. When the state sent their yearly funds to the Jackson school district’s bank, the person entering the money into the account fat fingered the one digit that transformed the destination of the funds from the schools account into Dave’s account.
After being thanked incessantly for the hour or so he was at the bank, waiting for them to figure the whole thing out, Dave was given a new account balance print out that ended her brief stroll down millionaire lane and put his funds back to where it was just a few days prior. Once he got home he looked at his ‘Things-to-do-with-a-million-dollars’ list and filed it away in his ‘Things-to-get-to’ folder. As a reward he did get his picture taken and was the front page story at the local newspaper.
I like to think that through my brother’s honesty and integrity to an ‘Oopsie’ situation that he singlehandedly was responsible for making sure all of the kid in that school district received an education that year. Hey, I’m a firm believer in puffing up a family member with greatness when they do something greatish. I’m also a firm believer in reminding them when they are being a bit of an ass as well. I guess you could call it fulfilling one of your functional duties for the group of people that you call family.
Dave was only a millionaire for a few days… and it was a complete accident, but technically he was one, which is still a goal I know a lot of people have. At least he got to check it of his ‘To Do’ list early on. Now that he’s got out of the way, he can focus on other, more important things. Still, it does make for a good story.
Image Sources:
Google Images, keywords: one million, ATM receipt, dinosaur, bank teller, newspaper, and to do list.
by Richard Timothy | Sep 14, 2010 | I Think There's a Point, Non-Fiction, Observationally Speaking, When I Was a Kid
I suppose that if there were ever a really bad B style horror movie made about Tippy and her insatiable craving for attacking the human race, this next story might be a good starting point. I’d like to say it’s about a good kitty gone bad, but to be as accurate as possible we better make it a bad kitty gone worse, well the same I guess. Tippy was always Tippy that never changed. due to relentless teasing by angst filled youth. Part two of Tippy’s attack cat memoirs begins with a sleepover my brother Dave was having with a few of his friends.
Being prepubescent boys there is a certain amount of mischievousness that, when you are of that age, seems funny. However, in the overall scheme of things it turns out not to be such a good idea. Enter Steve. Steve was one of the friends staying the night. While wandering around the house he noticed Tippy in the kitchen drinking out of her water dish. He called some of the other boys over to show them the brilliantly hysterical idea he just had. As the boys gathered around Steve bent over and tapped Tippy on the back of the head so that her face when into the water.
She pulled her head back, shook off the water that covered her face and in her best nonchalant manner, looked up at Steve. She stared at him for a few seconds and then went back to drinking. Steve did it again, and the group of boys giggled. Again Tippy just took a few moments to stare at Steve and when back to drinking. This process continued for a few more cycles, but the cat’s lack of response caused the boys to venture into a different room in the house to find something else to entertain them.
Eventually the phrase that has haunted and derailed the endless joy of having a sleep over with your friends was uttered… it was “time of bed.” A unanimous sigh of disappointment rose from the boys like a cloud of steam rising off the roads after a random rain storm in the middle of summer. But the adults had spoken, so Dave’s group of friends filed into the television room and climbed into their sleeping bags.
With five boys covering the orange shag carpeted floor, Dave cracked the door open to get a little air flow into the room. Then he flipped off the lights and climbed into his sleeping bag. Just as he was about two thirds submerged in his sleeping bag he felt a soft brush of fur against this arm. The cat was in the room with them. Dave jumped up, stumbled across the floor of boys as fast as he could and flipped on the light. It was too late. Tippy had taken her revenge.
Tippy had her front paws wrapped around the side of Steve’s head. Her back paws were wrapped around Steve’s neck, and she was biting his forehead. Steve attempted to scream out, but because the cat was wrapped around his face the second he opened his mouth to scream all he got was a mouth full of fur. So instead of a scream you got a lot of spitting sounds as he tried to get the fur out of his mouth. The second Dave took a step towards the cat she leapt off Steve’s face and dove out of the room.
After a thorough going over, Steve only had a few light scratches and a little bit of a twitch every time you said Tippy. As everyone calmed down and got ready for bed once again, Dave made sure the door was tightly closed this time. The others had laughed when her face kept getting tapped into the water so there was no telling how far she would go to get where she considered things to be even.
Turns out she was rather content with just biting Steve’s face and calling it even. As I recall, Steve never did bothered her again. In fact I’m not sure he came over much after the incident, just as a precaution.
Sadly, I have no idea what happened to Tippy. We had our cousins stop by to feed her while we went away on holiday one summer. When we got back, she was gone. Our cousins told us that they had not seen her for the latter part of the week. They would come over but fill her dish, but it had remained full for three days in a row. There are many possibilities as to what happened to her.
Perhaps the mothership came to take her home because her race of attack felines needed a champion. Maybe she picked a fight with a person who had a concealed weapons permit who didn’t like the way she was eyeballing them. Personally, I like to think that after four days of not having anyone to terrify and spontaneously attack for the sake of attacking, which she did do a lot, she set out on a walk about to reek terror on the world one Tippy attack at a time. It really does seem like the only logical explanation.
Image Sources:
Google Images, keywords: attack cat and wet cat.
by Richard Timothy | Sep 13, 2010 | I Think There's a Point, Non-Fiction, Observationally Speaking, When I Was a Kid
Pets, I’ve had plenty growing up… a few dogs, some fish, even some gerbils, but mostly cats. Yes cats, not necessarily because we were cat people, but because we weren’t pet people. When you own a cat it’s more of a living arrangement where one party takes care of the food and taking out the trash, while the other fills the roll of eating the food and contributing to the trash fill by my making processed food deposits in its very own box of rocks.
Let’s see, when it came to cats the ones I remember clearly are Bertha, TJ, Cosmo, Tigger, Tippy, and Evil… well my friends and I called it Evil, but my sister who actually brought the little thing home called it Misha. Crazy thing is she’s still around. She’s twenty people years old now and going strong. Granted she sleeps about twenty hours a day, but for those four hours she’s awake she’s eating cat food with her one remaining tooth and hiking up and down the stairs trying to find a nice warm spot to take a nap. Still, out of all of the cats we’ve had over the years the one that gets talked about the most when the family gets together is the one we called Tippy.
Tippy was more of an obvious name than a clever name. She was a fluffy little gray kitten, except for the tips. Every tip of the little fur ball looked like it had been dipped in bleach. The tips of her ears, her nose, her tail, her paws, even her tummy were all white. I’m not sure what it was about this cat, but if I had to pick just two words to describe it, juvenile delinquent are first ones that come to mind. Tippy had the memory of an elephant and the personality of a vindictive super villain that always got even. To compare it to the great felines in literary history, Tippy was the type of cat that would give Greebo a run for his money.
If you wronged this cat in any way, it remembered who you were and WOULD get even. The first example that comes to mind is my mom. She was in the kitchen one afternoon getting lunch ready. When Tippy saw someone bigger than her with opposable thumbs who could actually reach the cupboards were all the food is, she would wander into the kitchen with the intention of making herself noticed. This was in hopes that the human she was pestering would get her a little shack or even some scraps in place of her crunch dry cat food.
My mother had already kicked everyone, kids and pets alike, out of the kitchen. Tippy managed to run back in the house as all of the kids were filing out of sliding glass door into the back yard. It didn’t take long before there was a clatter of pots and pans and a yell from inside the house. The back door sudden slid open and there was my mom, holding Tippy cat by the immobilizing scruff of her neck. Then in one valiant heave, like a valkyrie doing the one handed underhand tree stump toss at the Valhalla Olympics, let go of the cat while yelling her infamous battle cry, “Stupid cat!” and slammed the door shut, which takes a lot of skill when you are stuck using only a sliding door.
Tippy made the kitty equivalent cry of someone jumping out of a plane without a parachute. As she spun and flew through the air her claws were and paws were out stretched in hopes that she would eventually catch hold of something tangible to hold on to and could then eventually make her way back to the ground. Instead Tippy landed about twenty feet from the back door. The second her paws touched the ground she was in a full sprint dashing away from the house and my mom.
It wasn’t until that evening, after dinner had been eaten and most of the kids were huddled around my mom on the living room couch to have a story read to us, that the cat had decided she had waited long enough. It was time for words to be exchanged between the two ladies of the house. My oldest brother was sitting in a chair across from the couch and watched the whole event transpire. Tippy, in the ultra silent ninja mode that comes to naturally to cats in general, scaled up the back of the couch. Once on the head-rest portion of the couch Tippy crouched as low as she could. Her complete and total attention was focused on my mom’s head. She would move an inch, then stop, then another inch, and then stopped again. She continued this stalking method until she was about four inches from my mom. Then, as her claws dug into the couch, she leaned forward so that her head was about three inches from my mom’s ear and hissed as loud as she could.
My mom screamed and threw the book in the air while yelling, “Stupid cat!” As soon as the book began its impromptu assertion out of my mom’s hand and toward the ceiling, Tippy leaped off the couch away from my mom and hid out the rest of the night. In the morning the cat walked into the kitchen and sat next to her food bowl. My mom noticed the cat, put some eggs into some boiling water, and then put some food in Tippy’s bowl. They came to a sort of truce I believe. If my mom was alone in the kitchen, Tippy would come in, but always stayed close to her bowl making sure she was out of my mom’s way. In return my mom would give her a little something in return, usually either an egg yolk or the juice from a can of tuna. Of course if any of us kids were in the kitchen, you can be assured that she was in there with us, underfoot and trying to get a sample of whatever it was that we were creating for an after school snack.
There is one more Tippy story that really does need to be shared. My favorite of all the Tippy stories that we acquired in the short time we had her. Come back tomorrow and I’ll tell you all about the slumber party were Tippy tried to eat Steve.
Do you have any revenge cat stories?
Image Sources:
Google Images, keywords: gray kitten, attack cat, falling cat, and cat food bowl.
by Richard Timothy | Sep 10, 2010 | I Think There's a Point, My Cutie Baby Sweetie Pie, My List of Things that Don't Suck, Non-Fiction, Observationally Speaking
Sleep… it’s one of those things that make us all the same. Granted, what we do in our sleep varies dramatically from person to person. Take me for example, now according to my sweetie-baby-cutie-pie, I flip over more times than a flapjack competing for a gold medal at an event where such things get people gold colored metals, or a blue ribbon at the very least. As for Angela, I really can’t say, I’m usually asleep before she is. Unless I can’t sleep, then I sneak out of bed, go to my office and work… or play, until I’m exhausted and ready to sleep.
I think one of my favorite things about sleep is how people react when they reach that deep state of slumber where Michael Stipe and his band mates begin making your eyes twitch rapidly. One of my favorite experiences of this happened during the first year Angela and I were together. We would take turns crashing at each others place because it was way too soon to get a place together. Anyway, one morning, a good twenty minutes before I was to hit my snooze button for the first or many times that morning, Angela woke up to the sound of singing, muffled, face in pillow singing, but singing just the same. She sat up and looked at me. Apparently, I was jerking my body around in little movements along with the incoherent song I was mumbling out of the side of my mouth. She then asked me, “Are you singing?”
This question pulled me right out of my dreamy rehearsal and into a reality where my dream was interfering with my honey’s sleep time. In a half sleep stupor and replied honestly and directly, “Yes, we were rehearsing for the big show that opens tomorrow. We only have one more dance to get through before we’re done.” She started laughing, and I went back to sleep so I could get back to rehearsing because I knew everyone was waiting for me.
She was kind enough to return the experience a few months later. It was probably three in the morning and Angela starts shaking me with one hand, and in a very concerned and worried voice told me, “Richard… Richard, there’s a bug on me. Get it off. I’m not even kidding. Get it off of me. It’s huge. I can’t move.”
I got out of bed, walked over to the light switch. As I flipped on the slights, Angela squeezed her eyes such and feinted away from the lights overhead. Seeing nothing on the blanket on top of her I asked, “Where’s the bug?”
Angela answered with laughter. She told me she was having a dream that we were camping and, well, you can probably guess what happened. We still laugh about that one from time to time, particularly the “I’m not even kidding” part.
There are times when sleeping can be a touch more dangerous than you would expect it to be. I have one friend that would have ninja battles in his dreams. The problem was that his wife turned out to be his opponent. He’d be facing off with some evil warrior and start kicking… in both his dream and real life, resulting in accidentally kicking his wife out of her sleep and onto the floor. Because his dreams were so vivid if she would get back in bed, he thought that the opponent was coming after him and would try to kick her out of bed again. When he woke up in the morning and found his wife asleep on the couch he was a touch confused. When he found out it was because she was afraid to get back in bed with the Sleeping American Ninja he talked to some people to get things sorted out. It’s now an incredibly rare occurrence as opposed to a once a week event.
One thing about sleep is when it’s good it’s like dessert for your brain… a sort of crunchy topped creamy yummy thing that the French are just crazy about, or that Italian cream filled cake that people who love the flavor of coffee just can’t seem to get enough of… or a combination of the two like some sort of tiramisu flavored Crème Brulee. Of course when it’s bad, it’s like a lot like poring yourself a tall glass of fresh brewed ice tea and half way down your realize you just poured yourself a glass of the vegetable soup stock that was made the night before, which has two key flavors that you’ve been gulping down, garlic and onions. It’s not an experience I’d wish on anyone, and it’s really not the way one should start off their day, but it sure will wake you up. Even after brushing my teeth three times I still couldn’t get the flavor out of my mouth… The point is you end up waking up tired, which I’ve always considered it to be a complete waste of time. It’s always a disgruntled morning when sleep leaves you tired.
Sleep is maintenance for your body and mind. Getting some sound sleep is like running your virus scan on your computer daily. It does help. And if you do find yourself a bit under the weather, get more sleep. Your body will thank you, your brain will thank you, and the people that could catch whatever it is you had will thank you for staying home to get some extra sleep until you felt well enough to come back to work. One last thing, when sleep comes over for the night, trust me… do not kick it out of bed. You deserve it.
What is one of your sleep stories that always puts a smirk on your face?
Image Sources:
Google Images, keywords: couple sleeping, dance rehearsal, ninja battle, and crème brulee.
by Richard Timothy | Aug 26, 2010 | I Think There's a Point, Non-Fiction, Observationally Speaking, Visual Smirk
Because family has arrived in town and my current Smirk is taking much longer than I expected, here’s another installment of “A Brief Moment in Human Ingenuity”. I hope you enjoy…
Lessons 16 – 20.
A brief moment in human ingenuity… Lesson 16: How new Apple toys can breed really bad fashion designs.
A brief moment in human ingenuity… Lesson 17: How to surf the web and drive… ask a plumber with a degree in mechanical engineering.
A brief moment in human ingenuity… Lesson 18: How to use your new keyboard (or mouse) with your old PC.
A brief moment in human ingenuity… Lesson 19: A ripe fix to a rotten situation.
A brief moment in human ingenuity… Lesson 20: How to build your own GPS mount in any car… works great as long as you don’t need to perform any u-turns.
Image Sources:
An e-mail from a friend.
Ears are interesting things. Not necessarily because of their size and shape, and how proportional they are to your head, even though all of those to play an important role in how much you were teased as a child and is a motivational factor in whether or not you grow your hair long or not. What I am referring to the how our ears emotionally identify certain sounds and the power those sounds have to created a positive or negative reaction in us.
To make this sound I highly recommend you wash your hands first. Hands are mischievous things that have a tendency to go places and touch things that not even a hand should touch. After washing your hands… you know, you might want to brush your teeth as well. At the very least I’d suggest gargling with some mouth wash. This, however, is dependent on if and what you have recently eaten. Once your hands and mouth are both properly sanitized for some friendly interaction, open your mouth and insert your index finger pressing it firmly against the inside of the cheek or your choice. Note: you will want to use a left to right system for this, i.e. if you use your right index finger, press it against the inside or your left cheek. Close your mouth around your finger so that no air can escape out of your mouth and then breathe out so that your mouth fills with air. As the pressure builds up, slide your finger along the side of your cheek and out of your mouth. As your finger exits, your mouth will make a loud popping noise.
There is another way to make this noise, which does not include any fingers in any mouths, and it is in this context that this sound that brings a smile to my face every time I hear it. It’s the popping sound a cork makes as it is removed from a new bottle of wine. Whenever I pull out a cork from a newly opened wine bottle that sound hits me in the face like a cream pie of pure joy. I’ll bet that anytime Dionysus makes a trumpeted entrance into Mount Olympus the horn section is a symphony of the cork popping sounds. It truly is one of my favorite euphoric sounds. And it is for that reason alone that I hope the screw top bottles in the wine world remain more minimal as opposed to becoming a standard.
