Hodgepodge

Flirtatious: "Can I interest you in a little vegemite?"

Real Mood? Splintered

Prediction: Even though the U.S. Oil industry wasn't wiped out by Hurricane Katrina,  the price at the pump will still go up.

I was going to use a synonym for hodgepodge, olio. But that's too close to oleo, a form of  which I want to talk about as part of hodgepodge.

Have you seen this new butter like stick which is made up of vegetable oil? Earth Balance Buttery Stick is the product name.  My first fear was that it was going to be some entrepeneurial Aussie trying to unload some leftover Vegemite. If you've never tasted that stuff, do yourself a favor. Don't! I shouldn't say that.  If you like CastorOil? You'll love Vegemite. You had to grow up with it I think. My Roo friends say it's a case of knowing how much to spread on your bread, or croissant, or muffin. Sorry mates. Just having a container of it open nearby can destroy my day.

Anyway, happily this new vegestick really tastes something like a cross between Oleo and Butter. So us butter lovers are thinking, "finally a healthy, good tasting, alternative to artery clogging butter."

Well, go ahead and use it, but don't read the ingredients label. I get a little suspicious when somebody tells me, "well there's bad fat and there's good fat."

It really is strange to watch that hurricane take the same path as the cruise we were on just a week ago. I don't want to say too much about that 'cause I'm going to do an entry on what I call "Chicken Little News."  Just as a tease, "42 thousand people did not die in New Orleans."

I did tease one of my students, Ambra (Name Dropper),who'd been in the Big Easy the same time Peggy and I were there. She cursed the cockroaches. Two traits I've heard about cockroaches. They are indestructable, and like elephants they never forget. We could have millions of cockroaches headed our way. Maybe like the Pied Piper we'll have to have Ambra lead them all into Barr Lake.

Have some sympathy for my friend Mindy who has been setting up ABC affiliate live shots from the Hurricane. She is discovering that just about every reporter on the planet wants to see what they look like on a bad hair day.

So I'm generally impressed with the skills of archetects and engineers with regards to space. They don't just know how things should work.  They pretty much know where they should go. Well somebody who designed a baseball field near here really needed to consult an archetect and an engineer.

I don't know why I hadn't noticed this before.  Off to my left as I'm driving down the highway (Major Highway)  I look up on the hill to see the netted fencing of the outfield. It's all in its familiar bent horseshoe like form. You know it's a baseball field.   Problem? The fencing for all fields (left, center and right) is sitting right over the highway. So Billy goes Yard? (hits homerun) Where does the ball land?  There is no way it can miss the hood of your Toyota.

But that's not the whole story. We know where the field fences are. So from that we can mathematically determine where home plate would be. My calcuations have all batters in afternoon games (the field has no lights) facing West and slightly North.  That would be where the sun hangs out in late summer, in the afternoon, in my neighborhood. I don't know about yours. I'm sure there's some important information I don't have.

I'm amused by the progress we've made in speeding up highway construction. My college room mate was an engineering major. He used to bore me with all this information about how long concrete had to cure before you could drive on it. (I'm sure he didn't appreciate treastises on my diciplines either)  Now pieces of highways and bridges are pre-formed and pre-stressed and then just delivered and slapped into place.

You may or may not know that if you generally get on the highway during rush hours. The trucks that deliver them are typically banned from deliveries during high volume periods.

So I'm bringing  this up because I saw a hugely long flatbed truck hauling a span of overpass mid day. It just looks weird. It's like the tractor and trailer are sandwiched between a road above and a road below. Only the top road is movng. I'm hoping you weren't expecting much out of this.

This is the second week of classes for me. It didn't take me long to get my mind blown. One of my classes is Introduction to Radio and Television. I try hard to sneak in a painless historical perspective. I'm talking at length this morning about Edison's invention of the PHONOGRAPH. I posed the question, "Did his recording played on that device of Mary Had a Little Lamb constitute the first known software?"

Well a hand pops up, and I'm expecting some deep exploration of the issue. You know something like, "well but can we really call it software?"

But no. The question from a student I've already determined is pretty sharp was:

"What's a phonograph?"

There is a student somewhere between the class average age and mine, who joined me in the jaw drop. He was the only one.

I looked around the room and it dawned on me.  She was not alone in her confusion. These students can only trace their history back to cassette tapes. Wow! I don't mind getting old.  But I hate it when it sneaks up on me like that.

I've gotten a lot of feedback from my last entry on our TV reunion. Bruce I'm thinkin' we needed that.