THIS 'N' THAT

I saw a funny thing the other day. I was on one of our rural highways in the early afternoon and traffic was light. Ahead I saw a county maintenance truck driving exceptionally slowly in the outside lane with two yellow caution lights flashing above the cab. As I got closer I could see it was the second of two country trucks. The lead truck was a flatbed. A man holding a shovel was sitting on the back edge of the truck with his legs hanging down toward the road. As the truck slowly crept past small potholes, the man tossed a shovel-full of asphalt into the pothole and the tires of the second truck rolled over it to flatten it out.

I could hardly believe my eyes. Granted they weren’t huge potholes but that was certainly the lazy man’s way of doing a little repair work. It made me think that maybe this blasé attitude toward road maintenance was the reason why the electorate voted this past week to become a city. Perhaps the 3,000 or so people who voted for cityhood – which won, incidentally – figured they’d had enough of the county’s attitude toward our distant corner of the county and decided to become a city to finally get some good repairs on the totally disreputable roads in this laid-back area.

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Now is not the time to disparage anything Japanese, but I found a recent article in the LA Times of such interest that I just have to pass it on here. There is an older man in Tokyo – 76 years old to be exact – whose profession has always been in the travel promotion industry. In the course of checking out hotels he discovered the porn film industry. The upshot of the matter is that he took on a second job and became a porn star without his family knowing about it. He went off to work every day…and none were the wiser. His roles, “in films playing upon well-documented Japanese male fantasies” has him playing “a gray-haired master of sex who teaches his ways to an assortment of young nurses and secretaries. Whips and sex aids often factor into the plotlines.”

His family discovered his second life when his adult daughter intercepted a fax offering him a juicy role. The daughter was pretty put out about it, but his wife was mainly concerned "that it might be too strenuous for him at his age.” So not to get overtired, he retired from the travel group and now has added posing for posters that say things like “Don’t be Ashamed of Getting Old” and “Lust is Good Medicine.”

The money appears to be pretty good. Seems to me that some of the retired geezers around our complex might make different use of their time in such a venture instead of sitting around drinking beer and complaining about the apartment’s management.

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In sorting through my photos for yesterday’s cat pictures I was reminded of Peanuts, my daughter’s darling Wheaten Terrier. I had never seen one of this breed in “person” – only in pictures. She was a darling puppy, all soft and fuzzy, and as she grew she just kept her charming looks and sweet disposition.

However, when the summer heat came the kids had her shaved down, since she spent quite a bit of time outdoors. It was surprising to find that she had an almost perfectly white undercoat. She looked like an entirely different dog. It took her a long time to get her disposition back. She wasn’t sure who she was, and furthermore she was truly embarrassed to be caught by my camera.



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In an earlier blog I mentioned that I got a portable CD player with earbuds so I could help myself drift off to sleep (hopefully) by listening to Faure’s Requiem. So far it has relaxed me, but I still tend to listen until the last chord has faded. It’s not quite accomplished what I wanted it to, but it has provided one spot of amusement, or better said, chagrin.

Last night I put my head on the pillow, nestled the little earbuds into my auditory canals, turned the player on and adjusted the volume. I seem to have a little difficulty seating them in a way that holds them in securely (it’s probably that I have weird shaped ears), and promptly the right bud fell out. With music playing away, I thought maybe the bud in my left ear might be shaped a little better for the right ear, so I switched it. But no matter how I put it in, I just could barely hear the music. Uh-Oh, I thought. I’ve got a failing earbud. To make sure, I tried both the right and the left earbuds in the right ear, one after another, and discovered that it is not the earbud that is failing.

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And finally, I bought a card for my cousin, a cat lover like myself, at Border’s going-out-of-business sale that only a cat-lover would appreciate. So begging your indulgence one last time, I’ll share its cover with you because I think it is pretty true and pretty funny.