Only in America

Monday 2005.0726 - 1745h

[Just before the Duke Brothers transformer blew . . . In our location on this planet, we receive most of our electrical power from the evil Duke Brothers. The rest we get from EverReady and DuraCell. The Duke Brothers are dead, BTW, and I think only one of them was actually evil. Of course, he was the one who made their little business such a great success!]

My first attempt at a Blahg, so bear with me as I see what happens when I publish this. I'm not too hopeful of a good result because when I hit {View Blog} above this window, I end up looking at the site of a man obsessed with sex. How do you feel about the sight of a man obsessed? What if he were blind or had no site? If he had no sight, he might not be obsessed with sex (men are very visual in this regard). He might be obsessed with food, or squeezing the filling out of stuffed lobster.

Personally, I don't have enough energy to be obsessed with sex, but I'd be happy to squeeze lobster almost any time, even at breakfast. As with most of life's desires, the granting of this wish to eat lobster might prove a barren outcome. I had a friend who lived in Key West and had lobster traps in the water behind his place (like almost every place in Key West). He said after six months of eating lobster for breakfast, lunch, dinner, and snacks, the site of a lobster made him want to hurl.

Blogger.com's SiteNameChooser subroutine must have a gliche, because it really should not have allowed me to name my site with a name that already existed on their site. If my site continues to cohabit with the above-mentioned sex-obsessed fellow, I guess I have to delete this Bee-Log and give it another go. I'll publish this and see where it goes.


Monday 2005.0726 - 1805h

Just after Duke Power transformer blew . . .

***
Tuesday 2005.0727 - 0540h

My the time just flies! It's already the next day because I couldn't post with all the power off (see below).

Indeed, the above post went know-where. {View Blog} still took me off to the sex guy, but my post didn't seem to be there. So I started a new BeLog site with the appropriate name seen above, namely "Startz-Over", which is a double-entendre keyed to my title "Only in America", based on the thought that we might be better off starting over. This notion of starting over is my doubter Brit's idea. She is not only my doubter, she is my daughter. Her blog on this site is the reason I'm here -- I couldn't comment without joining up.

We're in the middle of a power outrage, compliments of Duke Brothers Power and 103º temperatures that have embraced the Southeast potion of the US of A. There I am flippantly engaging my vocal chords in the local vernacular in which portion is pronounced POE-shun. I don't know what we might say around here in speaking of a love potion, for example, but I believe it would be POE-shun, same as portion.

Where am I, anyway? Oh yeah, Lenoir, NC. You might think that would be pronounced lehn-WAHR, as in Renoir. But let me set you straight -- it's lehn-OAR. Don't ask questions. Drive around on backroads here and you will hear noat kay-oh-LYN-ah for North Carolina. Wrap your mouth around that one. Kinda fun, actually.

BTW, our house sits at an elevation of 1160 feet above Mean High Tide (some of the meanest are along the coast of Maine, where the water may rise an incredible 40 feet from low to high tide). The problem with our house is it's not high enough -- if we raise it about 1500 to 2000 feet, the summer high temps will be much less and the humidity will be lower, too. (Another problem would be that it is made of brick and stone with 12" thick walls and even the federal government couldn't afford to raise it more than a few feet.) We're only about 25 minutes away from 4,400 FASL (Feet Above Sea Level), up in Blowing Rock, NC, but real estate prices there are even higher than the elevation so we're hoping to move to Burnsville, NC one day.

All signs of 120v/240v went bye-bye at 1800h and it is now 1930h. I called our Duke Power people and they informed me we should have power restored (ree-STOHD) about 2130h, witch (again, not a misprint, just a stupid homonym), to the woefully uninformed, means 09:30 pm, and that's one of the things we should start over -- the way we speak of time.

Military time, known more generally as "24-hour time" just makes more sense and is easier to deal with. Personally, I prefer time in tenths of an hour (6m intervals) because you can then add and subtract time with great ease, no longer having to do "your carries" based on a number system with a base of 60. My second grade teacher Miss Trevarthen called them carries -- as in "9 + 2, carry the 1" -- creating a flock of future dentists who were talking about addition and subtraction but whom were misunderstood by college advisors, and in case that escapes you -- dentists refer to cavities as caries.

Someday, maybe I'll speak more of Base 60. I know you can hardly wait. I wrote most of this last night, and have spent a long time this morning diddling with it and making italics work, etc.

Meanwhile, I'll head off to work, which won't take long because my work will be right here in front of me on this computer as soon as I mouse over and Lclk on it.