Auld Lang Syne
Should auld acquaintance be forgot,
And never brought to mind?
Should auld acquaintance be forgot,
And auld lang syne?
For auld lang syne, my dear,
For auld lang syne,
We’ll take a cup of kindness yet,
For auld lang syne.
And surely ye’ll be your pint-stowp!
And surely I’ll be mine!
And we’ll take a cup o’ kindness yet,
For auld lang syne.
Whoa, hold on just a second. We’re still scuffling with the question of whether or not auld acquaintance should be forgot and now you come prancing in here with this pint-stowp business. Wait a minute, what? Oh. A Scotchman just called in and advised that it was beer. Have you ever noticed they talk real funny in Scotland? They say things like “Max Welton’s braes are bonny,” and we don’t doubt that they are, but could you keep it simple? Getting back to that “auld acquaintance” matter, we’ve made a decision: Probably not.
Earth To Crackpots….
What happened? You got us to sell off all our earthlies and gather on this mountaintop down in Peru, waiting for the Apocalypse, and this is all we get? No end-of-the-world, no giant spaceship of salvation? Let me tell you, we’re getting a little hacked off about these doomsday scenarios. You haven’t got even ONE right yet. How do you keep an industry going when it’s wrong all the time? What? Well, that’s true. The Evangelicals have been doing it forever. And I guess the Republicans are still in business. Even so, most of these guys are happy with 10%. When you decide to give up on them, you still have something to fall back on. Unlike poor Nick Photopolous of Lowell, Mass.
“Well, me and the wife are a little disappointed right now. We expected to be jaunting through the universe and arriving at our new home on the planet P. T. Barnum by next week. I guess I can get my old job back at the hockey puck plant and Athena can pick up some waitressing, but it’s a big letdown, no doubt. I don’t guess our neighbors will give us the dog back.”
Yeh, Nick, it’s just a rotten shame and not just for you but for all the other would-be space-travelers out there. Call us No Fun, but we’d like to propose a new help group, maybe something called Aeronauts Anonymous, similar to the outfit which has helped so many overimbibers deal with their problem. It’s cheap and you make new friends even if they are less exotic. If that seems like insufficient fun, well, there’s always the Moonies.
2012—A Retrospective
Well, there have been worse years, that’s for sure. And we made a few discoveries in 2012. We found out about the exotic world of Geocaching from our old friend, Kathy Knight. Kathy was going to take us on a hunt last New Year’s Day before she fell over a fence and busted her pelvis into smithereens. Some people will do anything to get out of an engagement. We’re happy to report that Kathy is much better now and that she’ll be back from Peru by midweek.
Later that month, we gave everybody nicknames so they could keep up with my sister, Alice (the Republican). We are sad to report that some of our subscribers did not actually live up to their new titles. Katherine Bentler, dubbed The Runaway Bride after a heady escape from her Arizona fiancé, promptly returned to him, forfeiting her title. We warned Katherine that there would be a heavy price to pay but Youth Never Listens. So NO, Katherine, you can’t have your name back even though you did bail a second time. We could offer you The Two-Timer but you’d probably reject it. Keep us posted on your interesting adventures.
Last January, my sisters Alice and Kathy, despite their advanced ages, took a cruise to Central America, where they promptly made fools of themselves on the Zip Line. Alice told us that the Belizean fellows at the end of the line said that it was okay to simply CRASH INTO them rather than use the brake which more civilized people would prefer. Now I am happy to report that Alice, to her credit, has lost a good bit of weight recently but she is still not the type of person you would want smashing into you at the end of a Zip Line. Kathy either. I hope there was a generous tip involved to pay for all the rehabilitation expenses.
On a somber note, our great friend, Pat Brown, the Kindest Girl In Austin, reached her own End of Days last January. Pat was one of a kind, talented, charming, encouraging to one and all. She set up the first meeting between my first wife, Marilyn Todd and I in the office of the Texas Ranger magazine at UT in the Summer of 1962. While the marriage was short-lived, our three-year adventure, careening around the country from Austin to Boston to Florida, was rich and exciting. Later, Pat prodded me into starting this column with the command, “I don’t care what you write as long as you do it often and I get to read it.” Nobody ever turned down Pat Brown and lived to tell about it so now we have The Flying Pie. I don’t think I’m allowed to quit because I have a sneaking suspicion she’s still reading. Some people can send messages in dreams.
February And Beyond
The Scrabble Wars rose up in February, as Siobhan, her brother, Stuart, and eventually Irana had at it in bloody confrontations to the death. Stuart and Irana, being chronic idlers (like myself), have plenty of time for this foolishness, but Siobhan is a busy woman with people to meet, places to go, so she had to give it up. Besides, we think they cheat. If anybody beats us at anything, we think they cheat. We could be wrong about Stuart because he is a painfully honest guy. Once, when we were in Hawaii and wanted him to drive as far as we could get up Mauna Loa, he demurred because his contract with the rental car company said this was verboten. As if anybody ever pays attention to the rental car contract. Irana, though, we’re pretty sure about her.
In March, we discussed moving. While I will not be moving again EVER—unless Siobhan throws me out, which is always possible—our neighbors, Hal and Jennie Hollis, move somewhere every few months. Some people collect stamps, some people collect Cabbage Patch Dolls—the Hollises, they move. Everybody needs a hobby. One of the worst experiences of my life was moving from my giant two-story house in Gainesville which had been collecting trash and treasure—often indistinguishable—for 20 years. It seemed like I would NEVER finish gathering stuff up and packing. As it was, I ended up leaving a bunch of stuff in the old house, having no place to put it. When I moved from my smaller house in Gainesville to Siobhan’s tiny place, I had to keep stuff in a couple of the stalls at my old farm, leading to many Weather Surprises, one guaranteed way to move beloved “valuables” off the “keep” list. So now my collection is but a shadow of its old self, mired as it is in a couple of teeny closets. None of these moving problems phases the Hollises, however. Hal’s second favorite hobby is driving up and down the interstate from Fairfield to Alpharetta. Siobhan used to think he had a woman on the side but she has relented on that idea. Now she thinks he is a gun-runner.
Our water went out again in March. This happens a couple of times a year, always for a different reason. At my old farm, it was usually just a matter of marching over to the well and filing the points and spraying the area for ants, which for some reason seem to love electricity. Siobhan’s problems always seem to be more exotic, necessitating a climb to the roof, where we keep the Perry Signal. Perry McNabb is our red-haired fix-it man. He can fix anything. Mower blades on your tractor need sharpening? An absolute cinch for Perry. House floor sinking in the middle? Let’s jack that sucker up! Air conditioner on the fritz? Laughably simple to knock off. Well. Except maybe for the laughably simple time Perry ran into the Giant Snake inside. “Whoa,” remarked Perry, only mildly put off his game. “He’s a big fella!”
Most people probably think of the fix-it man as a local rube who took shop in school and expanded it into a career. Not an apt description of Perry, who is a little finicky about the jobs he accepts and the phone calls he chooses to answer. In the last couple of years, Perry has become a world traveler, venturing off to exotic locales at the drop of a hat and giving no notice.
“Hello, Perry—can you come over here and take a look at my washing machine? It’s acting up again.”
“Well, I’d be happy to, Missy, but I bought a lot of chips at the Casino here in Monte Carlo and I’m on a wild ride. Could we set something up for next month?”
It’s certainly nice to know your handyman is very successful but meanwhile it’s raining through the roof.
In April, we got to talk about the horse business on Court Lewis’ American Variety Radio Program, a broadcast which brought us a good number of new readers. They were probably expecting to discover more exciting horse news, though the title of the blog might give you pause to wonder. Anyway, despite being confronted with what most of them must have considered a bizarre alternative, many of them actually stayed with us which gives us a little concern about them. Not that we aren’t appreciative.
April was also the month I started visiting a new massage therapist named Tiara Catey. This was a Great Leap Forward for me as Tiara proved adept not only at assuaging issues of back, hip and what-have-you, she was also able to use her esoteric powers of witchery to reinstate my normal sleeping hours which had become seriously undependable. I told her I could put her name in lights. She modestly credited the sandalwood oil. Then, five months later, she disappeared as quickly as she had arrived, making up a dubious story of following her husband to a new job in Helena, Montana. As if anybody would buy that one. Nonetheless, she has flown the coop and I have been forced to take up with a new girl with the merry name Sheree, a fine replacement, though not yet a sandman.
Well, lookee here. It’s only April and we’re out of column. You’ll have to return next week to see what happened the rest of the year. Or just scroll back and read it yourself. In next week’s column, we’ll reveal the identity of our very first Internet Hero Of the Year, a person we all know and love. So you be here for all the excitement. We’ll also check in with Puck and Hannah as they continue to dance their respective ways to Calder on the First of March. Puck is officially named Cosmic Flash now but poor old Hannah is as yet unnamed for racing purposes, partly because we have a bunch of unimaginative blog readers out there who are not making the appropriate contributions. And that includes you, Barbara. Let’s start burning that midnight oil, we haven’t got all year.
That’s all, folks….
Should auld acquaintance be forgot,
And never brought to mind?
Should auld acquaintance be forgot,
And auld lang syne?
For auld lang syne, my dear,
For auld lang syne,
We’ll take a cup of kindness yet,
For auld lang syne.
And surely ye’ll be your pint-stowp!
And surely I’ll be mine!
And we’ll take a cup o’ kindness yet,
For auld lang syne.
Whoa, hold on just a second. We’re still scuffling with the question of whether or not auld acquaintance should be forgot and now you come prancing in here with this pint-stowp business. Wait a minute, what? Oh. A Scotchman just called in and advised that it was beer. Have you ever noticed they talk real funny in Scotland? They say things like “Max Welton’s braes are bonny,” and we don’t doubt that they are, but could you keep it simple? Getting back to that “auld acquaintance” matter, we’ve made a decision: Probably not.
Earth To Crackpots….
What happened? You got us to sell off all our earthlies and gather on this mountaintop down in Peru, waiting for the Apocalypse, and this is all we get? No end-of-the-world, no giant spaceship of salvation? Let me tell you, we’re getting a little hacked off about these doomsday scenarios. You haven’t got even ONE right yet. How do you keep an industry going when it’s wrong all the time? What? Well, that’s true. The Evangelicals have been doing it forever. And I guess the Republicans are still in business. Even so, most of these guys are happy with 10%. When you decide to give up on them, you still have something to fall back on. Unlike poor Nick Photopolous of Lowell, Mass.
“Well, me and the wife are a little disappointed right now. We expected to be jaunting through the universe and arriving at our new home on the planet P. T. Barnum by next week. I guess I can get my old job back at the hockey puck plant and Athena can pick up some waitressing, but it’s a big letdown, no doubt. I don’t guess our neighbors will give us the dog back.”
Yeh, Nick, it’s just a rotten shame and not just for you but for all the other would-be space-travelers out there. Call us No Fun, but we’d like to propose a new help group, maybe something called Aeronauts Anonymous, similar to the outfit which has helped so many overimbibers deal with their problem. It’s cheap and you make new friends even if they are less exotic. If that seems like insufficient fun, well, there’s always the Moonies.
2012—A Retrospective
Well, there have been worse years, that’s for sure. And we made a few discoveries in 2012. We found out about the exotic world of Geocaching from our old friend, Kathy Knight. Kathy was going to take us on a hunt last New Year’s Day before she fell over a fence and busted her pelvis into smithereens. Some people will do anything to get out of an engagement. We’re happy to report that Kathy is much better now and that she’ll be back from Peru by midweek.
Later that month, we gave everybody nicknames so they could keep up with my sister, Alice (the Republican). We are sad to report that some of our subscribers did not actually live up to their new titles. Katherine Bentler, dubbed The Runaway Bride after a heady escape from her Arizona fiancé, promptly returned to him, forfeiting her title. We warned Katherine that there would be a heavy price to pay but Youth Never Listens. So NO, Katherine, you can’t have your name back even though you did bail a second time. We could offer you The Two-Timer but you’d probably reject it. Keep us posted on your interesting adventures.
Last January, my sisters Alice and Kathy, despite their advanced ages, took a cruise to Central America, where they promptly made fools of themselves on the Zip Line. Alice told us that the Belizean fellows at the end of the line said that it was okay to simply CRASH INTO them rather than use the brake which more civilized people would prefer. Now I am happy to report that Alice, to her credit, has lost a good bit of weight recently but she is still not the type of person you would want smashing into you at the end of a Zip Line. Kathy either. I hope there was a generous tip involved to pay for all the rehabilitation expenses.
On a somber note, our great friend, Pat Brown, the Kindest Girl In Austin, reached her own End of Days last January. Pat was one of a kind, talented, charming, encouraging to one and all. She set up the first meeting between my first wife, Marilyn Todd and I in the office of the Texas Ranger magazine at UT in the Summer of 1962. While the marriage was short-lived, our three-year adventure, careening around the country from Austin to Boston to Florida, was rich and exciting. Later, Pat prodded me into starting this column with the command, “I don’t care what you write as long as you do it often and I get to read it.” Nobody ever turned down Pat Brown and lived to tell about it so now we have The Flying Pie. I don’t think I’m allowed to quit because I have a sneaking suspicion she’s still reading. Some people can send messages in dreams.
February And Beyond
The Scrabble Wars rose up in February, as Siobhan, her brother, Stuart, and eventually Irana had at it in bloody confrontations to the death. Stuart and Irana, being chronic idlers (like myself), have plenty of time for this foolishness, but Siobhan is a busy woman with people to meet, places to go, so she had to give it up. Besides, we think they cheat. If anybody beats us at anything, we think they cheat. We could be wrong about Stuart because he is a painfully honest guy. Once, when we were in Hawaii and wanted him to drive as far as we could get up Mauna Loa, he demurred because his contract with the rental car company said this was verboten. As if anybody ever pays attention to the rental car contract. Irana, though, we’re pretty sure about her.
In March, we discussed moving. While I will not be moving again EVER—unless Siobhan throws me out, which is always possible—our neighbors, Hal and Jennie Hollis, move somewhere every few months. Some people collect stamps, some people collect Cabbage Patch Dolls—the Hollises, they move. Everybody needs a hobby. One of the worst experiences of my life was moving from my giant two-story house in Gainesville which had been collecting trash and treasure—often indistinguishable—for 20 years. It seemed like I would NEVER finish gathering stuff up and packing. As it was, I ended up leaving a bunch of stuff in the old house, having no place to put it. When I moved from my smaller house in Gainesville to Siobhan’s tiny place, I had to keep stuff in a couple of the stalls at my old farm, leading to many Weather Surprises, one guaranteed way to move beloved “valuables” off the “keep” list. So now my collection is but a shadow of its old self, mired as it is in a couple of teeny closets. None of these moving problems phases the Hollises, however. Hal’s second favorite hobby is driving up and down the interstate from Fairfield to Alpharetta. Siobhan used to think he had a woman on the side but she has relented on that idea. Now she thinks he is a gun-runner.
Our water went out again in March. This happens a couple of times a year, always for a different reason. At my old farm, it was usually just a matter of marching over to the well and filing the points and spraying the area for ants, which for some reason seem to love electricity. Siobhan’s problems always seem to be more exotic, necessitating a climb to the roof, where we keep the Perry Signal. Perry McNabb is our red-haired fix-it man. He can fix anything. Mower blades on your tractor need sharpening? An absolute cinch for Perry. House floor sinking in the middle? Let’s jack that sucker up! Air conditioner on the fritz? Laughably simple to knock off. Well. Except maybe for the laughably simple time Perry ran into the Giant Snake inside. “Whoa,” remarked Perry, only mildly put off his game. “He’s a big fella!”
Most people probably think of the fix-it man as a local rube who took shop in school and expanded it into a career. Not an apt description of Perry, who is a little finicky about the jobs he accepts and the phone calls he chooses to answer. In the last couple of years, Perry has become a world traveler, venturing off to exotic locales at the drop of a hat and giving no notice.
“Hello, Perry—can you come over here and take a look at my washing machine? It’s acting up again.”
“Well, I’d be happy to, Missy, but I bought a lot of chips at the Casino here in Monte Carlo and I’m on a wild ride. Could we set something up for next month?”
It’s certainly nice to know your handyman is very successful but meanwhile it’s raining through the roof.
In April, we got to talk about the horse business on Court Lewis’ American Variety Radio Program, a broadcast which brought us a good number of new readers. They were probably expecting to discover more exciting horse news, though the title of the blog might give you pause to wonder. Anyway, despite being confronted with what most of them must have considered a bizarre alternative, many of them actually stayed with us which gives us a little concern about them. Not that we aren’t appreciative.
April was also the month I started visiting a new massage therapist named Tiara Catey. This was a Great Leap Forward for me as Tiara proved adept not only at assuaging issues of back, hip and what-have-you, she was also able to use her esoteric powers of witchery to reinstate my normal sleeping hours which had become seriously undependable. I told her I could put her name in lights. She modestly credited the sandalwood oil. Then, five months later, she disappeared as quickly as she had arrived, making up a dubious story of following her husband to a new job in Helena, Montana. As if anybody would buy that one. Nonetheless, she has flown the coop and I have been forced to take up with a new girl with the merry name Sheree, a fine replacement, though not yet a sandman.
Well, lookee here. It’s only April and we’re out of column. You’ll have to return next week to see what happened the rest of the year. Or just scroll back and read it yourself. In next week’s column, we’ll reveal the identity of our very first Internet Hero Of the Year, a person we all know and love. So you be here for all the excitement. We’ll also check in with Puck and Hannah as they continue to dance their respective ways to Calder on the First of March. Puck is officially named Cosmic Flash now but poor old Hannah is as yet unnamed for racing purposes, partly because we have a bunch of unimaginative blog readers out there who are not making the appropriate contributions. And that includes you, Barbara. Let’s start burning that midnight oil, we haven’t got all year.
That’s all, folks….
