tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4682231504477859362012-02-14T11:04:59.063-08:00MurrmurrsSnortworthy.Murr Brewsterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03422638986410813520noreply@blogger.comBlogger3291100tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-468223150447785936.post-27873797585686786962012-02-11T03:00:00.001-08:002012-02-11T03:00:07.882-08:00Whatever Could The "C" Stand For?I’m not the expert. I could be a candidate for the show “What Not To Wear” based on my underpants alone. I don’t like my underpants and they don’t do anything for anybody else either. I even wear them inside-out to keep the seams and poky bits on the outside, which really seals the deal, aesthetically. But when I saw the new C-string, I found myself asking, “what is the point of underpants, Murr Brewsterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03422638986410813520noreply@blogger.com132tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-468223150447785936.post-49814752301856563712012-02-08T03:00:00.002-08:002012-02-08T03:00:06.066-08:00PootieFactIntroducing PootieFact, an occasional feature in which our roving reporter Pootie seeks to separate the factual from the fatuous. Our first guest, Mr. Newt Gingrich, has kindly consented to be interviewed in the interest of affordable publicity.
In this election year, many are asking why Americans should trust the Republican Party with our economic recovery when it is the Republican principles Murr Brewsterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03422638986410813520noreply@blogger.com52tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-468223150447785936.post-41939059918714178222012-02-04T03:00:00.000-08:002012-02-04T03:00:02.238-08:00Infecting The BlogosphereOne of the more annoying discoveries I have made is that there is such a thing as an "influential blogger." I'm not against the principle that someone who never gets out of pajamas could exert influence. I just don't know why it can't be me. I have opinions. I have desires to change the world. What I don't have is influence, and until recently, I didn't realize you could.
But there are whole Murr Brewsterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03422638986410813520noreply@blogger.com80tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-468223150447785936.post-36701936889001753182012-02-01T03:00:00.000-08:002012-02-01T09:27:46.378-08:00Biological WeaponryOur recent house guest Munny is a bright young woman who was looking for a living situation with other people. She claims to need a social atmosphere. I'm just the opposite. I want to live alone with at most one other person who also wants to live alone. I used to think this was because I was so good at amusing myself, and maybe that's what it was at first. Now I've got different reasons. And it Murr Brewsterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03422638986410813520noreply@blogger.com78tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-468223150447785936.post-10178587068836736222012-01-28T03:00:00.000-08:002012-01-28T03:00:05.504-08:00Mom On The MantelAt the old cemetery in the Taos Pueblo, I couldn't help noticing a jumbled heap of crosses and headstones piled up against the wall. The tour guide explained that once a cross slumps over, they set it aside but don't replace it, and eventually they slide someone else in on top of the unmarked grave. So there's sort of an expiration date beyond expiration. This is sensible; this helps to relieve Murr Brewsterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03422638986410813520noreply@blogger.com56tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-468223150447785936.post-37506090533691013412012-01-25T03:00:00.000-08:002012-01-25T03:00:13.582-08:00D'Oh! A DeerMuch obliged to Murrmurrs friend Jono for alerting me to an incident in Wisconsin, wherein a certain Bryan James Hathaway was brought up on charges of attempting to have sex with a dead deer. Objections did not come from the ungulate, but from offended passersby. Many questions arise. Exactly how public was this display? Was the act performed right there on the shoulder, or somewhere towards the Murr Brewsterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03422638986410813520noreply@blogger.com74tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-468223150447785936.post-2333770839041828952012-01-21T03:00:00.000-08:002012-01-21T03:00:00.340-08:00Foggy With A Chance Of InspirationIt's January, it's gray, it's somewhere just above freezing and there's enough moisture in the air to annoy moss. The sun has already indicated a lack of interest in this part of the world. It is not pouting so much as it has decided that its talents are better appreciated elsewhere. Oregonian rods and cones have shut down so tightly that the oven light makes us squint. In short, it's the dead ofMurr Brewsterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03422638986410813520noreply@blogger.com69tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-468223150447785936.post-76060438554274675292012-01-18T03:00:00.000-08:002012-01-18T03:00:14.885-08:00The Word Of God: NEW! IMPROVED! 30% MORE ABSORBENT!I can't, in good conscience, call myself a good Catholic, for the same reason I can't call myself a star-nosed mole. It would be disingenuous. So there's a case to be made that I shouldn't have anything to say about the new Catholic liturgy.
But I do have a small, yappy dog in this fight, because I am a language lover. And I believe that whenever possible words should stroke the ears on the way Murr Brewsterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03422638986410813520noreply@blogger.com77tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-468223150447785936.post-62929721514648290632012-01-14T03:00:00.000-08:002012-01-14T03:00:03.340-08:00Dream A Pathetic Little DreamI would like to lodge a complaint to the authorities, should there be any, about the kit that comes with my soul, if I have one. I do not intend to nitpick. Most things work as well as could be expected. This is not about my neck, which I have come to terms with. Various items are showing signs of wear and tear and this is all in the normal course of events, and not what a mature individual Murr Brewsterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03422638986410813520noreply@blogger.com73tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-468223150447785936.post-92213819314845889812012-01-11T03:00:00.000-08:002012-01-11T03:00:01.147-08:00Senator Inhofe: Public ServicerThe Tulsa Metro Chamber couldn't be sorrier that it implied that Senator Jim Inhofe (Rasty Old Fart--OK) was wrong to speak of homosexuality and bestiality in the same sentence, as though he thought the two were equivalent. The Chamber is abject. It won't happen again. Officials of the Chamber are looking into the source of the gaffe and have it narrowed down to a couple of pansies in the Murr Brewsterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03422638986410813520noreply@blogger.com44tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-468223150447785936.post-9990094970134930252012-01-07T03:00:00.000-08:002012-01-07T03:00:07.643-08:00Does This Knowledge Make My Rear Hippocampus Look Big?Research has demonstrated that London cabbies have bigger rear hippocampuses than the rest of us, and it isn't because they sit all day.
The cabbies in London are a special group in that they are trained to master "the Knowledge," a mental map of 25,000 streets. The hippocampus, from the Latin for where large mammals go to get an education, is an otherwise small portion of the brain tucked just Murr Brewsterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03422638986410813520noreply@blogger.com51tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-468223150447785936.post-13337037301739971332012-01-04T03:00:00.000-08:002012-01-04T03:00:06.869-08:00New Year, ResolvedTen seconds before midnight January 1, 2004, my friend stubbed out his cigarette. "That's it--that's my last one," he said.
"Oh, did you resolve to quit smoking in 2004?" I said.
"I resolved to quit smoking in 2003," he said.
Let that be an inspiration to you. If you're bound and determined to skin a cat, which I don't endorse even though I could suggest some candidates, recognize that there Murr Brewsterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03422638986410813520noreply@blogger.com39tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-468223150447785936.post-9851804774222842732011-12-31T03:00:00.000-08:002012-01-01T22:33:03.071-08:00Putting The Pieces TogetherAs it happens, I'm a quilter too.
I mention this because Nancy, who writes a quilting blog, sent an almost unprecedented number of her readers my way. A whole flock of quilters landed on Murrmurrs and pecked around, and I don't know if they knew what to expect. Mine is a work-a-day, all-purpose blog. I figure if I don't specialize in subject matter, I'll be harder for the trolls to pigeonhole. Murr Brewsterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03422638986410813520noreply@blogger.com52tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-468223150447785936.post-41239903585548400812011-12-28T03:00:00.000-08:002011-12-28T03:00:00.093-08:00Rebooting The BiffyKohler has developed a toilet that anticipates your every desire, because men simply do not spend enough time in the can as it is. It's called the Numi and it can be yours for around six thousand dollars. It has a remote control.
The seat and lid open and shut on command. An extendable cleansing wand can be summoned at the appropriate time from the back end of the toilet to rinse your target Murr Brewsterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03422638986410813520noreply@blogger.com40tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-468223150447785936.post-69684508909828423692011-12-24T03:00:00.000-08:002011-12-24T03:00:09.182-08:00Pootie's ChristmasWe always got a balsam fir for Christmas, because Daddy thought those smelled the best, but even if we picked it up early, he leaned it up against the back porch to keep it cold and fresh until we put it up, which was never early. My parents were firm believers in moderation in all things, even though in some things, like swearing and spending money just because, they were more abstinent than Murr Brewsterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03422638986410813520noreply@blogger.com36tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-468223150447785936.post-10747490063094863892011-12-21T03:00:00.000-08:002011-12-21T03:00:02.608-08:00Calling On The Butter FairyNorway is suffering a killer butter shortage during the holiday season. This is tragic because Norwegian cuisine in its entirety uses only seven ingredients: butter, cream, flour, potatoes, sugar, codfish, and oven cleaner. And butter is the most important of these for a number of reasons. All dishes owe their structural integrity to butter, which keeps the flour molecules apart. Also, native Murr Brewsterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03422638986410813520noreply@blogger.com49tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-468223150447785936.post-7996997328816969602011-12-17T03:00:00.000-08:002011-12-17T10:03:03.985-08:00Parasites In The HouseBirds work their fannies off. That's why you hardly ever see a proper fanny on a bird. Especially during nesting season, they're up at the crack of dawn and spend the whole day going about the business of raising a family. There's nest construction, and defense, and music performance anxiety, and feeding their young. It's not easy.
Unless you're a cowbird.
Cowbirds are among the animals Murr Brewsterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03422638986410813520noreply@blogger.com35tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-468223150447785936.post-39987323891591364562011-12-14T03:00:00.000-08:002011-12-14T03:00:18.602-08:00Giving Kaiser The FingerDave's middle finger just blew up. It had always been knobby since the day he mishandled a line drive and smashed the last knuckle to bits. But although that injury ended any career he might have had as a pianist, his finger has more or less behaved itself through the years. Until a few weeks ago. That's when, for no reason, it started to swell up. It got huge and round and pink on the end. It Murr Brewsterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03422638986410813520noreply@blogger.com49tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-468223150447785936.post-28530756192969597712011-12-10T03:00:00.000-08:002011-12-10T03:00:05.330-08:00Margaret Day!It's the Most Underful Time.....of the year! With your panties all shreddy and holes in your teddy but be of good cheer...it's the Most Underful Time...of the year! Oh my goodness, International Day Of Margaret is almost upon us! And just in time, too, wedged in that crotch between Thanksgiving and Christmas when we could all use a lift. There is no more frabjous holiday!
It's been obvious for Murr Brewsterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03422638986410813520noreply@blogger.com63tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-468223150447785936.post-58996812988912341782011-12-07T03:00:00.000-08:002011-12-07T03:00:00.485-08:00The Bum Bum: An Improctical SolutionA woman in Florida nearly died after having her buttocks pumped full of cement by a transgender woman posing as a doctor, which is going to do nothing to advance the cause of trans acceptance, even though the vast majority of transgendered people I know would never think of doing such a thing.
I'm okay with my own heinie. It hasn't fallen yet, at least, which is something I'm told they can do. IMurr Brewsterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03422638986410813520noreply@blogger.com49tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-468223150447785936.post-37232739419375796812011-12-03T03:00:00.000-08:002011-12-03T03:00:06.341-08:00On The Edge Of Hall's HillA while back, I opened the Sunday paper to find a little sidebar with the headline "this week in the Civil War." It was startling. That's the kind of news you get when you get into bed backwards and oversleep, I guess.
My first cup of coffee clarified that this was to be a retrospective series recapping the events of the Civil War 150 years ago. I'm really looking forward to it, because I don't Murr Brewsterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03422638986410813520noreply@blogger.com50tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-468223150447785936.post-79197531477927324112011-11-30T03:00:00.000-08:002011-11-30T03:00:00.177-08:00Forced To CurlI don't remember many dark moments in my childhood. Mom was a pleasant, smiling, patient woman in a calico dress and apron who smelled like bread baking, and at least once a day she would give me a big hug and call me her sweetie-pie sugar-plum honey-dumplin' puddin'-head, all in a row like that so she wouldn't forget any of it, and she sang You Are My Sunshine to me, and let me lick the beaters,Murr Brewsterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03422638986410813520noreply@blogger.com63tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-468223150447785936.post-42500001989621545122011-11-26T03:00:00.000-08:002011-11-26T03:00:04.742-08:00THE VIDEO OBAMA DOESN'T WANT YOU TO SEEBig Dick--that's what he likes to be called--ushered the New Guy into the Situation Creation Room.
"Welcome to Operation Peg-Leg, the home of the R's. Everybody, this is the New Guy."
"Arrrr," everybody said, raising a hooked finger. The New Guy smiled. "So this is where the magic happens," he said, tentatively hooking his finger in response.
Big Dick swept his hand over the room. "As you can Murr Brewsterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03422638986410813520noreply@blogger.com23tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-468223150447785936.post-36403720369683667872011-11-23T03:00:00.000-08:002011-11-23T03:00:11.814-08:00CluelessHey, I never told you all about last Thanksgiving. It was something. I can reveal that it was Dave, in the kitchen, with the candlestick holder, but I don't have a clue how exactly it went down. I will say this: you just never know what you're capable of until some big man encourages you to try something new. Encourages, yells at the top of his lungs, whatever.
The candlestick holder was a beautMurr Brewsterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03422638986410813520noreply@blogger.com39tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-468223150447785936.post-66400457295802669292011-11-19T03:00:00.000-08:002011-11-19T03:00:04.084-08:00Murr, Murr, Quite ContrurrTo those who say America has been asleep, lulled by television and cheap electronic toys from China, unaware of what has been taken from us and not moved to protest, I give you Portland, Oregon. Here, sir, we have had a sustained demonstration of outrage and indignation for over five weeks now. We will not be ignored; we will stand up for what is right, we will demand redress. We have just had Murr Brewsterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03422638986410813520noreply@blogger.com39tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-468223150447785936.post-37198911283602910402011-11-16T03:00:00.000-08:002011-11-16T03:00:07.753-08:00EmURKURKergency!I missed that whole 11/11/11/11:11 thing, and the test of the Emergency Alert System, and the last four raptures, and it was all due to inattention. Many people feel that things like the eleventh second of the eleventh hour of the eleventh month in the eleventh year of the century are very special and should be observed. It won't ever come back again, they say, which does little to distinguish itMurr Brewsterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03422638986410813520noreply@blogger.com42tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-468223150447785936.post-74843604510374945342011-11-12T03:00:00.000-08:002011-11-12T03:00:01.448-08:00Murrketing
tweet
The dickens of it is that if there were any social medium I was likely to cotton to, it would be Twitter. True, I do like to write in complete sentences, but 140 characters are about all I can manage before I lose track of my idea anyway. Quips and gags that will never accrete into a blog post trickle through my head all day long, and I can tell because they leave little stains on my Murr Brewsterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03422638986410813520noreply@blogger.com54tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-468223150447785936.post-35703806712152865782011-11-09T03:00:00.000-08:002011-11-09T03:00:08.643-08:00ExtinctionSays here in the paper they've got a boot camp for black-footed ferrets, and there isn't a day so fine that it can't be improved by news like that. I can see them now, all those ferrets lined up doing push-ups, like furry piano keys. The black-footed ferret is a carnivorous, tubular mammal of the American midwest, or at least it was. Now, after a brief period of extinction, it is a tubular mammalMurr Brewsterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03422638986410813520noreply@blogger.com30tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-468223150447785936.post-62149709977540520892011-11-05T03:00:00.000-07:002011-11-05T03:00:11.638-07:00'Tain't FairI loved my former gynecologist, who was cute, smart, and laughed in all the right places. She once even agreed--eagerly, I might add--to take pictures during my exam in case I needed some for my blog, and you can't put a price tag on that, although they might have been worth something thirty years ago.
So just as soon as you get a doctor you really, really like, what happens? She treats you for Murr Brewsterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03422638986410813520noreply@blogger.com49tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-468223150447785936.post-52174061162031923312011-11-02T03:00:00.000-07:002011-11-02T03:00:03.173-07:00Tracking The Fall Dot MigrationThere are two kinds of people in the world: regular, and birders. Usually, identification is easy. Birders are the ones wearing binoculars. But there's also an intermediate phase--the pictures in the guide book are of Dave and me--the swell-hearted clueless aspiring birder. This form also wears binoculars, so you have to look for the random ass-scratching and perplexity around the eyebrows.
DaveMurr Brewsterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03422638986410813520noreply@blogger.com38tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-468223150447785936.post-85816930419578741132011-10-29T03:00:00.001-07:002011-10-29T03:00:08.369-07:00Save The Fetal Corporations!It's getting on late afternoon, which means it must be about time for another Republican debate. They're showing up more often than rate-increase notices from the cable company. I try to catch as many as I can, because they're not going to go on forever. By mutual agreement, they are capping the number at 665.
I find them fascinating. But there's no danger I'm going to be voting for any of theseMurr Brewsterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03422638986410813520noreply@blogger.com41tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-468223150447785936.post-82419999394955589052011-10-26T03:00:00.000-07:002011-10-26T03:00:08.651-07:00If It Quacks Like A Quark...Australian paleobotanist J. W. Schopf says he has found the world's oldest fossils, the traces of single-celled organisms 3.4 billion years old. Other Australian scientists disagree. "No you di'n't," they pontificate. So there's controversy. The second set of scientists has set up camp a few miles away and they think their fossils are the oldest. The whole issue is fraught. It's hard to imagine Murr Brewsterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03422638986410813520noreply@blogger.com27tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-468223150447785936.post-60955071889561526032011-10-22T03:00:00.000-07:002011-10-22T09:43:52.772-07:00Have Gloom, Will TravelYour human brain is remarkable in many ways, but a lot of what makes it remarkable also makes it very wrinkly, and that means it requires some upkeep to keep it moist and in tip-top shape. The wrinkles are prone to filling up with lint if exposed to too much drudgery, despair, or television. For proper maintenance, the brain needs to have beauty pounded into it as often as possible. You never Murr Brewsterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03422638986410813520noreply@blogger.com40tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-468223150447785936.post-47460452051806509722011-10-19T03:00:00.000-07:002011-10-19T03:00:17.124-07:00Fried Monkey PoopIran has been trying to shoot a monkey into space, and Israel is feeling jumpy about it. A single monkey is one thing, but an infinite number of monkeys blasted into space with an infinite number of typewriters might succeed in producing the Koran.
Iran is a little late in the space monkey business. Unconsulted monkeys have been strapped into rockets since 1949. Ostensibly the reason for sendingMurr Brewsterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03422638986410813520noreply@blogger.com24tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-468223150447785936.post-18174914170070401352011-10-15T03:00:00.000-07:002011-10-15T03:00:00.051-07:00A Hare Under 5'4"Says here they tried to reintroduce a population of bunnies into central Washington and it didn't take. They put twenty little pygmy rabbits out there in the sagebrush and got nothing for it. Nineteen of the bunnies fell to predators and they rescued the twentieth after a brief debate with a creationist over the likelihood of immaculate conception.
It's hard for me to imagine trying and failing Murr Brewsterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03422638986410813520noreply@blogger.com32tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-468223150447785936.post-59773489929019182602011-10-12T03:00:00.000-07:002011-10-12T03:00:09.145-07:00Birthday BoyToday is Oliver's birthday. Not the anniversary of Oliver's birthday, but his actual one. Did you feel that planetary wobble? That was our boy. He was supposed to show up more than a week ago, but he was disinclined, and had to be evicted. Baby Oliver, my great-nephew, is the first new thing in our family in thirty-one years, and is a production of the last new thing.
I don't really blame him Murr Brewsterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03422638986410813520noreply@blogger.com41tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-468223150447785936.post-8310790938006188822011-10-08T03:00:00.000-07:002011-10-08T03:00:07.488-07:00Snakes On A PlaneA man was apprehended recently trying to board a plane with several snakes and three tortoises in his pants. Officials were tipped off when the x-ray equipment revealed a surplus of spines. There's no mystery about why a man would do such a thing. He carries tortoises in his pants because mice are too fidgety, and he carries snakes in his pants because they are too large to fit in a four-ounce Murr Brewsterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03422638986410813520noreply@blogger.com30tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-468223150447785936.post-91936159091128599902011-10-05T03:00:00.000-07:002011-10-05T08:19:54.892-07:00Kick-AstronautsThey've had six astronauts cooped up in a can since June of last year, and they're not planning to let them out until November, after 520 days. That's the amount of time it would take to get to Mars and back. It's a test for future manned space flight, and it's pretty clever, really. Most of us would have thought the sticking point would be the actual getting them to Mars, not to mention back Murr Brewsterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03422638986410813520noreply@blogger.com29tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-468223150447785936.post-70088256701154828532011-10-01T03:00:00.003-07:002011-10-01T03:00:04.012-07:00Crusty Old BroadI just had yet another birthday, which is as good a time as any to think about death. This year's observation: we're told that people on the cusp of death see their lives flash before them in a chronological series of memories, like a slide show. I have discovered that the exact same thing happens in the process of baking a pie, except in reverse order, and with only the wretched memories, and Murr Brewsterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03422638986410813520noreply@blogger.com47tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-468223150447785936.post-40779388974633383602011-09-28T03:00:00.000-07:002011-09-28T03:00:13.651-07:00What's That In Your Pants?I hate bananas. There, I said it.
I didn't used to hate bananas. They weren't anything special, but they were easy to peel and dispatch, and easy goes a long way in my book. They're high in potassium. You jam one in the top end, and you ward off foot cramps at the bottom. As long as they stayed out of Jell-O, they were okay. But after a few decades of bananas, I began to realize I didn't like Murr Brewsterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03422638986410813520noreply@blogger.com40tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-468223150447785936.post-76204194765912980952011-09-24T03:00:00.000-07:002011-09-24T10:04:35.888-07:00Burn ThisHUGE article here in the paper, an entire page, about how for the first time FREE armored safes are going to be made available to the public, for only $281. I know it's real, too, because the byline was from the UMS, the Universal Media Syndicate, a well-known arm of Bite Me Industries. Plus, the offer is being made by World Reserve officials. That would be the World Reserve Monetary Exchange, Murr Brewsterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03422638986410813520noreply@blogger.com25tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-468223150447785936.post-31738646466726561972011-09-21T03:00:00.000-07:002011-09-21T03:00:20.953-07:00To Dream, Perchance To TweetSo I'm on Twitter, I guess. Now what?
This will no doubt resolve itself in time, but for now the thought of plunging in and learning the ropes makes me spin into reverie. This is a cherished ability of mine, to look clear-eyed into reality and veer away, and it's a significant component of my mental health regimen. In my reverie there's an on-ramp, and a man is walking up it towards me. That's Murr Brewsterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03422638986410813520noreply@blogger.com25tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-468223150447785936.post-87909091036114533132011-09-17T03:00:00.000-07:002011-09-17T03:00:05.806-07:00Clean-up On Aisle Seven
Turned out to be a painter, not a moose
I was picking blueberries in my garden the other day and trying to stay out of the way of the painters when an unmistakable odor-finger pointed my way. "Smells like something died around here," I said, which made all the painters point at each other in accusation. I get that. I don't know how it is in the white-collar world, but back in the post office weMurr Brewsterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03422638986410813520noreply@blogger.com39tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-468223150447785936.post-60612781764003421772011-09-14T03:00:00.000-07:002011-09-14T03:00:09.242-07:00New Lows In High FashionTime was, I came by information by looking for it. Nowadays I come by it by looking for something else. For instance, I needed to remember what a collarbone looked like the other day for a drawing I was doing. Theoretically I could have looked in a mirror, but I was at the computer, and that motivates one differently (the primary impulse is to remain slumped in a chair). I could also have hit theMurr Brewsterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03422638986410813520noreply@blogger.com38tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-468223150447785936.post-30677520250989797882011-09-10T03:00:00.000-07:002011-09-10T03:00:10.586-07:00TMI About BMIWhen I first found out there were tests to determine one's fat percentage, I was interested. Who wouldn't want to know how marbled they are? People love to put numbers on stuff. At the time, there were a couple ways of going about it. Someone could measure you with calipers in certain key spots, like the mid-rib tickle zone and the upper arm wobbletorium. As long as they stayed away from my neck,Murr Brewsterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03422638986410813520noreply@blogger.com33tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-468223150447785936.post-34271731070873062622011-09-07T03:00:00.000-07:002011-09-07T03:00:08.745-07:00PissedEveryone's pissed. The Republicans are rolling out a template of candidates who promise to put God in their cabinets. The Democrats thought they'd already elected God and are vexed he isn't doing more smiting. The Buick of State is up on blocks and not moving at all, now that the Rs have taken all the wheels off, and the Ds can't figure out why the president isn't at least leaning on the horn. Murr Brewsterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03422638986410813520noreply@blogger.com42tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-468223150447785936.post-14961486310922725212011-09-03T03:00:00.000-07:002011-09-03T03:00:06.083-07:00He Got A New Attitude
Dave
Dave said we needed to repaint the house two years ago, and planned to do it last summer, so this summer he really meant it. He'd been worrying about it ever since the paint dried fourteen years ago; he got agitated if I planted something too close to the house that would just need to be trimmed back later. He is a pre-emptive fretter anyway, believing that early worrying gets you in Murr Brewsterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03422638986410813520noreply@blogger.com38tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-468223150447785936.post-9383152606147080982011-08-31T03:00:00.001-07:002011-08-31T03:00:12.722-07:00Also, Wash Your Hands AfterwardsMost people think they have the basics of hygiene down, but odds are some of us don't. That's why you occasionally run into public-health information such as this sign, posted in a community college rest room, to alert us to sound hand-washing technique. This sign was carefully designed to account for people's different learning styles. We don't all take in information in the same way. Some Murr Brewsterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03422638986410813520noreply@blogger.com35tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-468223150447785936.post-21552183043057244552011-08-27T03:00:00.000-07:002011-08-27T03:00:07.730-07:00The Wisdom Of LiceOne thing you can say for lice--well, you pretty much have to say everything for lice, because their vocal cords are very tiny--is they know their place. True, you may have differences with lice about what their proper place is, but as far as they're concerned, they're rock-solid on the subject. They've been around since before the dinosaurs were raptured. They're a roaring success and it would Murr Brewsterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03422638986410813520noreply@blogger.com27tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-468223150447785936.post-1505044787571421092011-08-24T03:00:00.000-07:002011-08-24T03:00:12.385-07:00Ambling Along The X-AxisOnce a week the local paper puts out some pages on the theme of Your Health, condensing the latest science news into an easily digestible form that could fit on a cereal box. This makes it simple to judge the state of your own health and your likelihood of dying, possibly in time to take evasive action.
The articles about longevity get people to sit right up and pay attention. There have been Murr Brewsterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03422638986410813520noreply@blogger.com27tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-468223150447785936.post-47750952842226533492011-08-20T03:00:00.000-07:002011-08-21T15:15:41.188-07:00Body PartsA woman in Honolulu recently found a human hand floating around. She found it twice. It kept coming back. Dueling ukuleles plinked ominously in the distance. Locals were chilled by the discovery, but in reality, sections of human beings actually turn up rather often. There's a boom market in them in the Salish Sea, off the coats of western Canada and Washington, where ten feet have washed up in Murr Brewsterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03422638986410813520noreply@blogger.com32tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-468223150447785936.post-57096562513325420032011-08-17T03:00:00.000-07:002011-08-17T03:00:04.144-07:00A Matter Of Some GravityI remember the first time I gave blood. I was a teenager, and a little nervous. "I've never done this before," I confided to the needle man. "Cool! I've never done this before, either!" he said, which would have been hilarious if he'd said it to my roommate.
I've been giving A+ blood for forty years since. You get used to the routine, although it does change. The questionnaire got a lot longer Murr Brewsterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03422638986410813520noreply@blogger.com33tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-468223150447785936.post-35306450451064780282011-08-13T03:00:00.001-07:002011-08-13T03:00:08.604-07:00I Got Yer Content Right HereI'm fresh off the Willamette Writer's Conference here in Portland, where upwards of 800 other brilliant, ignored writers convened to learn the intricacies of subplots, polish their prose, and conspire to make sure no agent enjoyed an unmolested moment. Every attendee harboring a screenplay or a novel was desperate to find that one missing piece: the champion that would recognize the worth of her Murr Brewsterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03422638986410813520noreply@blogger.com32tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-468223150447785936.post-20052923230171055822011-08-10T03:00:00.000-07:002011-08-10T03:00:05.810-07:00Getting Away With ItThe official version [wink] is that nobody knows where all the money that regular people used to have went, but hey, they're starting to make some progress in the old D. B. Cooper case, so that's something. "D. B." is not the hijacker's real name, but a journalist's typo for "Dan Cooper," which is also not the hijacker's real name, which might be Tim, or Mitt, or Michele. At any rate, he boarded Murr Brewsterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03422638986410813520noreply@blogger.com24tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-468223150447785936.post-22685285310643061862011-08-06T03:00:00.000-07:002011-08-06T03:00:09.578-07:00Senile In Three LanguagesIf you live long enough, your language begins to get holes in it. It's like any other fabric you've nearly loved to death. Most of the holes in my home-team language have developed in places formerly occupied by nouns. I'll be traipsing along in a merry conversation and suddenly I'm brought up short at the edge of a pit, looking into it for my noun. They come back eventually. It's like how you Murr Brewsterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03422638986410813520noreply@blogger.com53tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-468223150447785936.post-50140507168659743982011-08-03T03:00:00.000-07:002011-08-03T09:26:27.273-07:00A Forbearance Of Brewsters
Great-grandfather Brewster
When Elder William Brewster herded his flock into the bowels of the Mayflower to come to America, he was a man of vision. Nowhere was his vision more in evidence than when he looked into the possibility of a world filled with Brewsters and concluded there was no reason to rush into things.
My ancestors have been deliberate to the point of sludginess when it comes to Murr Brewsterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03422638986410813520noreply@blogger.com30tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-468223150447785936.post-54212635979577916512011-07-30T03:00:00.000-07:002011-07-30T03:00:04.704-07:00Driving While Stupid"Just drive the way you normally do for the first 1500 miles and your car will figure out how you drive and adjust itself accordingly," the salesman said when I bought my Toyota Yaris four years ago. It was an odd instruction. How else was I supposed to drive? Was I supposed to drive normally for 1500 miles and then really schiz it up after that?
This was my first automatic car. The shift Murr Brewsterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03422638986410813520noreply@blogger.com20tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-468223150447785936.post-70685188255885596632011-07-27T03:00:00.000-07:002011-07-27T03:00:11.367-07:00Things That Blow UpIt's July, and we're making great headway manufacturing our crack supply for the next year. Our raspberry crop is booming away out there and we can barely stand to divert a single berry from what we've determined is its highest and best use: syrup. The recipe is even simpler now that I ignore portions. The portions, as told to us, are One Part Raspberries to One Part Sugar, which even works in Murr Brewsterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03422638986410813520noreply@blogger.com28tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-468223150447785936.post-66990610038691234402011-07-23T03:00:00.000-07:002011-07-23T03:00:00.128-07:00A Mighty Wind
Hans and Petra, my grandparents
As an Oregonian, I tend to think my state stacks up favorably when compared with the other states, but I did suffer a flicker of envy the other day when I read about Arizona. A giant haboob just flew through there at speeds up to sixty miles per hour, and all we have is elk.
A haboob is a massive dust storm, and Arizona has a lot of them, although of course thisMurr Brewsterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03422638986410813520noreply@blogger.com27tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-468223150447785936.post-1362298900595272232011-07-20T03:00:00.000-07:002011-07-20T03:00:15.468-07:00Uh-Oh: Not A Poop Post:A few weeks ago I took a trip to Uh-Oh World. Uh-Oh World is where everything is upside down and nothing is as it should be. In Uh-Oh world, W.C. Fields strolls through Disneyland with a sarsaparilla. Michele Bachmann takes up paleontology. The Pope gets caught in public without his homilies. And I don't take a dump for three days.
Not three consecutive days, but still. It's so wrong. This is Murr Brewsterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03422638986410813520noreply@blogger.com16tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-468223150447785936.post-43980012366466997322011-07-16T03:00:00.000-07:002011-07-16T03:00:02.936-07:00Mouse On The March
Antediluvian cousins: Don in front
I was thinking about my cousin Don the other day, and wondering what he was doing. I was hoping it wasn't the dog-paddle. Don lives in Minot, North Dakota, where the Mouse River has been over-expressing itself of late. It's not a really big river, but it doesn't have to be to cause trouble, because it runs through really flat terrain. Any water that breaches Murr Brewsterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03422638986410813520noreply@blogger.com24tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-468223150447785936.post-89820822002696792782011-07-13T03:00:00.000-07:002011-07-13T03:00:14.356-07:00God vs. GaneshYou know those old pre-Renaissance Christian paintings, with the flat faces cranked into an unnatural position, the way they posed you for your school photograph? And halos like dinner plates? Never cared much for them, but I care even less for Hindu art, which always strikes me as looking like it should have been painted on velvet and sold hanging from a cyclone fence at an intersection. I don'tMurr Brewsterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03422638986410813520noreply@blogger.com30tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-468223150447785936.post-69411268018777854902011-07-09T03:00:00.000-07:002011-07-09T03:00:10.693-07:00As Long As You're Peeing AnywayI was in the Convention Center the other day and went to the restroom to pee and there, near my left foot, was a big black spider. The rest of the women in the room were very lucky, although they didn't know it, that it was me in that stall and not my friend Casey. If Casey is startled by a spider, or, frankly, if there's one anywhere within the county lines, she will emit a shriek that could be Murr Brewsterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03422638986410813520noreply@blogger.com19tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-468223150447785936.post-56516081829729109642011-07-06T03:00:00.001-07:002011-07-06T03:00:02.356-07:00A Family ReunionI came upon a glory the other day, a sight to behold--made me all trembly. And it's a good thing Dave wasn't there for it, or he might have keeled over dead, and not in a good way. I saw five billion murres in one place. He's in favor of murres but thinks they are best in small and manageable numbers, such as One.
My murres were massed on several rocky outposts in the Pacific Ocean, jammed in Murr Brewsterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03422638986410813520noreply@blogger.com32tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-468223150447785936.post-42124163242361847452011-07-02T02:00:00.000-07:002011-07-02T02:00:05.739-07:00Hormones: A Personal HistoryI've heard it said that an idle mind is the Devil's workshop. I don't know about that, but I do know that hormones are the Devil's nuclear arsenal. They start out small, edging into the game with spitwads and paintball. "Let's see about some hair," hormones begin, installing shrubbery here and there. That seems to go well, so they experiment with acne. "This will go away in a few years," hormonesMurr Brewsterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03422638986410813520noreply@blogger.com37tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-468223150447785936.post-61868641400645639312011-06-29T02:00:00.000-07:002011-06-29T02:00:03.417-07:00TelevisionIf you want to know what's on the TV around here, it's usually Tater. As a television, ours is a really good cat heater. Tater likes to watch videos on the computer screen, preferably while sitting on the nice nubbly keyboard, but even she won't watch our TV. It might well be the crappiest TV in America. It's old. If you come over to watch football on our TV, the game will always be between the Murr Brewsterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03422638986410813520noreply@blogger.com23tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-468223150447785936.post-70728530424618230572011-06-25T02:00:00.000-07:002011-06-25T02:00:03.198-07:00Holy CrapA recent study of the priest-pedophilia scandal, commissioned by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, has concluded that the priests involved were mainly victims of the Sixties and bad training. I'm not buying it, but not because the Sixties was not an unusual time. All sorts of odd ideas became mainstream, and although people learned to be reflexively skeptical of pronouncements from the Murr Brewsterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03422638986410813520noreply@blogger.com33tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-468223150447785936.post-28343865125694176042011-06-22T02:00:00.001-07:002011-06-22T09:29:29.182-07:00To Have And To Hold Up Progress
Pride Day, Portland, Oregon
The effort to legalize gay marriage in New York is stalled. The Republican majority has been meeting in a closet to discuss the matter and has gotten no closer to a resolution. There's a delicate balance to strike. On the one hand we have the right of adult humans to marry whom they want. On the other hand we have the duty to protect the right of dozens of citizens Murr Brewsterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03422638986410813520noreply@blogger.com35tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-468223150447785936.post-26367820973268209812011-06-18T02:00:00.000-07:002011-06-18T09:28:34.673-07:00A String TheoryWhoa. I found a piece of string the other day. Just lying there on the carpet. About a yard long, too. I picked it up and ran it through my fingers. String! I hadn't seen any in years. It was like an artifact. I drifted in time. Arthur Godfrey murmured from the melamine radio; bottles of milk were at the back door, and a Fuller Brush man was at the front. I don't know where this string came from.Murr Brewsterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03422638986410813520noreply@blogger.com35tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-468223150447785936.post-67841451751676344462011-06-15T02:00:00.000-07:002011-06-15T09:56:11.851-07:00Drink Up Your Beer: Solar Flare's Comin'The sun got into a snit the other day with the potential to knock out satellites and threaten the power grid here on Earth. People depending on GPS wouldn't even know which way to go. Recent sunspot activity culminated on June 7th in a "coronal mass ejection," which means a tremendous burst of solar wind. Been there. I got into some suspect falafel the same night and I wasn't sure which way to goMurr Brewsterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03422638986410813520noreply@blogger.com23tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-468223150447785936.post-45498762441554251972011-06-11T02:00:00.000-07:002011-06-11T02:00:06.111-07:00Geriantics"Oh shame, oh ignominy, oh shit." These are the words of frequent commenter Lo, who is a kick in the pants, on the eve of her 84th birthday. It isn't the birthday that bothers her. It's that she has to take a driver's license exam again. Several things come to mind. One, 84 isn't what it used to be. For much of my life, 84 was old. I knew 84-year-olds. They said "oh dear," and "oh my," and if Murr Brewsterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03422638986410813520noreply@blogger.com35tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-468223150447785936.post-20726714059237145012011-06-08T02:00:00.000-07:002011-06-08T02:00:03.131-07:00I Do Too CookShortly after we met, Dave was standing slack-jawed in my kitchen, watching me cook my dinner. I had stripped the label off a can of peas, cracked the lid, and was holding it on the burner with a pair of pliers. When it was heated through, I strained the peas through the lid, opened it up the rest of the way, stirred in some mayonnaise and dug in. My can was ready to recycle and I'd only dirtied Murr Brewsterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03422638986410813520noreply@blogger.com39tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-468223150447785936.post-36790044792136348672011-06-04T02:00:00.001-07:002011-06-04T02:00:08.634-07:00He Wouldn't. Would He?I got out of the habit of paying attention to the news every minute during the previous administration because it ruined my health. So it was a few days before I discovered that the top story now is the allegation that Congressman Anthony Weiner (D-New York) has tweeted his penis to a college girl in Seattle. I don't know all the ins and outs of this development, but the congressman claims Murr Brewsterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03422638986410813520noreply@blogger.com34tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-468223150447785936.post-82666922065098135722011-06-01T02:00:00.000-07:002011-06-01T02:00:05.487-07:00Thud Thud ThudThere was this ominous thudding sound. It was rhythmic; it shook the house. I wondered if we were finally gearing up for our 9.0 earthquake. Then I figured it was pile-driving somewhere nearby. Finally I realized it had to be Godzilla. Thud. Thud. Thud.
I was right the third time. Says here in the paper that Walmart wants to jam in seventeen new stores near here and wipe out all the other Murr Brewsterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03422638986410813520noreply@blogger.com43tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-468223150447785936.post-40283215798493721852011-05-28T02:00:00.000-07:002011-05-28T02:00:03.298-07:00Tubby Or Not TubbyI'll say right off that I take exception to the entire list of deadly sins. According to the Catholic Church, the seven deadly sins are Gluttony, Sloth, Envy, Pride, Lust, Runniness and Gelatitude, and all of them come with a handbasket, but I'm not buying it. Gluttony, for example, has no business in there at all. At its heart, gluttony is a simple appreciation of bounty. A simple, Murr Brewsterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03422638986410813520noreply@blogger.com33tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-468223150447785936.post-39914923864207096632011-05-25T01:00:00.000-07:002011-05-25T09:39:19.428-07:00It Came From The Cretaceous"That's cruel." Caught by the neighbor.
"Not really. There is nothing in this world safer than a velociraptor I'm chunking a rock at." It's a fact. Nobody stands behind me in horseshoes without a helmet. I don't always let go in time. The velociraptor in question leapt straight up to the wall and sneered at me before vanishing. It was beautiful; even I could see that.
"I guess you're not a Murr Brewsterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03422638986410813520noreply@blogger.com35tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-468223150447785936.post-77723122998673913892011-05-21T01:00:00.000-07:002011-05-21T01:00:00.211-07:00Summer's Just Around The Corner, But It's A Very Long BlockIt's coming up on Memorial Day, the day Portlanders traditionally begin to think about putting out their tomato starts in a few weeks, say, early June, which is our name for early July. At least the old-timers do. Newer immigrants have had their tomatoes out since the official date of the last expected frost, April 15th, and there they remain, precisely the same size a month and a half later, Murr Brewsterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03422638986410813520noreply@blogger.com23tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-468223150447785936.post-28107702669885911252011-05-18T01:00:00.000-07:002011-05-18T01:00:04.011-07:00Nocturnal EmissionsDave snores. It's not so bad. Mostly it's just one big chainsaw outburst after a nice six- or seven-minute interval during which he does not breathe at all. It's called sleep apnea, and it wouldn't be a problem except for that danger of death thing. There's supposed to be a significant increase of mortality among people with sleep apnea, although no one mentions that dying in your sleep is prettyMurr Brewsterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03422638986410813520noreply@blogger.com25tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-468223150447785936.post-60644229882276406222011-05-14T01:00:00.000-07:002011-05-14T17:19:40.744-07:00True ColorsA local woman is suing a tanning salon for allowing her naked body to be seen by passersby on the sidewalk. In its defense, the salon points out that there is a teeny little sign in the room indicating she might want to lower the blinds. The woman stated that she naturally assumed, when she walked into the room and began to take off her clothes, that the large plate-glass window to the sidewalk Murr Brewsterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03422638986410813520noreply@blogger.com29tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-468223150447785936.post-16334645599140636432011-05-11T01:00:00.000-07:002011-05-11T01:00:03.951-07:00A Royal DoI'm informed that every little girl wants to be a princess and have a fairy-tale wedding, so it must be true, even though I don't recall thinking about my wedding at all as a child, and only wanted a puppy, and was scandalized when that girl in my fourth-grade class wearing the pink tulle frothy princess outfit won Best Halloween Costume even though I had a neat flannel leopard suit that I had Murr Brewsterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03422638986410813520noreply@blogger.com44tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-468223150447785936.post-79953390520384620812011-05-07T01:00:00.000-07:002011-05-07T01:00:04.109-07:00War On Errorism: Six Impossible Things Before BreakfastThe world cheered, got drunk, rolled its eyes, and blew things up this week at the news that Osama bin Laden may or may not have been killed by U.S. special forces or somebody else in a firefight involving helicopters rumored in any case to be black. He was killed along with, in back of, or near a woman whom he was using as a shield, or just using, who may have been a wife, a whole different wifeMurr Brewsterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03422638986410813520noreply@blogger.com38tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-468223150447785936.post-42993792388084024272011-05-04T01:00:00.000-07:002011-05-04T01:00:01.416-07:00The Slow TwitchThey've got this genetic test they can do now so you can find out if your child is likely to excel in athletics. This test is particularly useful if your own observational skills are meager. They look for some kind of gene marker for speed and springiness. You can swab the inside of your child's cheek and send in the DNA to the testing lab and for $160 they'll let you know if he's got potential Murr Brewsterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03422638986410813520noreply@blogger.com37tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-468223150447785936.post-80504287885934996802011-04-30T01:00:00.000-07:002011-04-30T01:00:04.757-07:00The Sainthood ExpressThere's controversy brewing over the impending beatification of John Paul II. It's too speedy, they say. He's only been gone six years, and you can't even get on a stamp until you're ten years cold. J.P. may have been adorable in his beanie and red shoes, but he's just not dead enough for sainthood.
I don't know how dead you have to be. In fact the entire business of generating saints is a Murr Brewsterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03422638986410813520noreply@blogger.com38tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-468223150447785936.post-40072377587360234502011-04-27T01:00:00.000-07:002011-04-27T01:04:11.355-07:00Service Snails
Objects may be smaller than they should be.
A sewage incinerator in Russia has six enormous snails on the payroll to monitor air pollution conditions at their smokestack. The snails are eight inches long; they probably ambled over from Chernobyl. The idea is that even though smokestack emissions are already monitored by conventional means, the snails will give them a heads-up if things are Murr Brewsterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03422638986410813520noreply@blogger.com34tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-468223150447785936.post-83245633688625345432011-04-23T01:00:00.001-07:002011-04-23T09:21:27.034-07:00My Friends Are QuestionableIt's probably spring by now. Birds are picking fights with each other, and some of them are--why, I believe they are wrestling. Dave built a chickadee house and situated it a foot away from my window where I do all my writing in order to facilitate the procrastination process. I was just up there today and no sooner had despaired of seeing our chickadee pair this year than they showed up. Same Murr Brewsterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03422638986410813520noreply@blogger.com36tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-468223150447785936.post-75439762871597676572011-04-20T01:00:00.000-07:002011-04-20T01:00:01.192-07:00Funny BusinessI don't want to let the subject of taxes go without expressing our appreciation for the fat credit we got for installing solar panels. That was a gift from all of you other taxpayers, and we're grateful. Now that you've finally got it right, I don't think I'd be out of line for mentioning that we like this a whole lot better than that war you've been getting us the last God knows how many years, Murr Brewsterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03422638986410813520noreply@blogger.com22tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-468223150447785936.post-42289105093380942152011-04-16T01:00:00.000-07:002011-04-16T01:00:04.219-07:00Owe, The HumanityI hate working on my taxes. I'm fine with paying them. Here's how I think it should go down: I tell the IRS how much money I have and they tell me how much of a slice they want out of it, and we're done. We make the deal, and you won't hear me whining about it on some reactionary blog where people clutch their pennies to their chests as though it was their very freedom. I also hate paying someoneMurr Brewsterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03422638986410813520noreply@blogger.com33tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-468223150447785936.post-45268759478919399962011-04-13T01:00:00.000-07:002011-04-13T01:00:05.175-07:00Giving A Shit For ScienceI'm always looking for a way to advance science, and three recent articles pointed out some possibilities. Unfortunately, I'm too afraid of the water to become a dolphin snot collector, and although I would be only too happy to harvest semen from a snot otter, that involves travel. So that leaves poop donation.
It has only been recently that dolphin snot has hit the news. The promise for Murr Brewsterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03422638986410813520noreply@blogger.com29tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-468223150447785936.post-25727140981109533192011-04-09T01:00:00.000-07:002011-04-09T01:00:01.770-07:00The CawcusIt's spring, according to the birds, although otherwise it's hard to tell it from the previous four months of damp and drear. And that means we're getting ready for nest-building, and drowned peonies, and the annual ant infestation; and people will tell each other earnestly that they really didn't mind the cold all winter but this is just ridiculous, and some people will be moved to open a vein Murr Brewsterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03422638986410813520noreply@blogger.com39tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-468223150447785936.post-46279813154706176652011-04-06T01:00:00.000-07:002011-04-06T01:00:01.465-07:00Fangs A LotThey found a new fossil critter, size of a dog, they say, a saber-toothed vegetarian dinosaur. They know it's a vegetarian because it has good vegetable-grinding teeth in the upper jaw, and although they did not find the lower jaw, they expect it matched up. Otherwise, evolutionarily speaking, it wouldn't make any sense at all. It would be like having the top teeth trying to prevent abortions Murr Brewsterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03422638986410813520noreply@blogger.com28tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-468223150447785936.post-36658589311119629912011-04-02T01:00:00.000-07:002011-04-02T01:00:06.047-07:00Curses! Soiled AgainRecently, in a post, I mused about the old manual typewriters I grew up with, and, as I'm sure it did for many of you, it put me in mind of my sex education. Not the segment of it I got from the gutter as God, and certainly, Mom intended, which was fascinating, far-fetched and turned out to be true, but the part I got from Mom. I was nine years old and she was typing out my application for summerMurr Brewsterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03422638986410813520noreply@blogger.com69tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-468223150447785936.post-59447196456840036682011-03-30T01:00:00.000-07:002011-03-30T01:27:24.477-07:00Diapers Of Doom
Archival Photo
If anything will bring down this great country, it will be our inability to see past the next election cycle. We are doomed if we settle for short-term solutions to long-term problems. Thank God Texas is still producing Gomers who can see the big picture. No wait. Gohmert. Louie Gohmert. He is so far ahead of the curve he might actually be around the bend.
Here is a man who getsMurr Brewsterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03422638986410813520noreply@blogger.com48tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-468223150447785936.post-85700804633046221812011-03-26T01:00:00.000-07:002011-03-26T01:00:06.702-07:00It's Only A Vapor MoonMy friend Dale, who slings English like nobody's business over at mole, recently lamented that so many people were baffled by the movements of the moon and planets. The dynamics underlying the phases of the moon are so evident to him that he believes people are being, if not deliberately obtuse, unobservant in the extreme. He makes a good point. Whatever the moon is doing, it has been doing it inMurr Brewsterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03422638986410813520noreply@blogger.com55tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-468223150447785936.post-9223053146677144322011-03-23T01:00:00.000-07:002011-03-23T01:00:11.230-07:00Not That I Don't Like LizardsI'm seeing trailers on TV for an animated film about a chameleon, starring the voice of Johnny Depp. If there's a bigger waste of resources than that, I'm not aware of it. No one needs the voice of Johnny Depp. Johnny Depp's voice is not what any of us are interested in. It all reminds me of how people sink huge money into elaborate caskets and then bury them six feet under. What's the point?
Murr Brewsterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03422638986410813520noreply@blogger.com58tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-468223150447785936.post-66838305245429447392011-03-19T01:00:00.000-07:002011-03-19T01:00:05.487-07:00Get Me My Formica HatThe news wasn't good on NPR. We were driving home in a hailstorm listening to speculation about radiation clouds emanating from Japan. The planet had made a little adjustment in its outerwear, as it must do--it doesn't mean anything by it--but the human consequences were devastating, and still unfolding. Finally Terry Gross's show came on, the hail let up, and we were just settling in to hear a Murr Brewsterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03422638986410813520noreply@blogger.com40tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-468223150447785936.post-50284373614289795042011-03-16T01:00:00.000-07:002011-03-16T01:00:00.894-07:00What We Have Here Is A Failure To Procreate
The end of the Brewster line (arrows)
Out of four of us siblings, only my brother managed to eke out a child, and he totally didn't mean to. Only a small part of him wanted a child, and that was the part that won the day. We're all pretty thrilled with the results, though. My niece turned out way better than we dared hope. She, however, isn't doing anything about having children herself--quite Murr Brewsterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03422638986410813520noreply@blogger.com49tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-468223150447785936.post-80440232726856774152011-03-12T01:00:00.000-08:002011-03-12T01:00:05.384-08:00Expensive SpeechThe word has come down from the Supreme Court that Fred Phelps and his pious pustule posse at Westboro Baptist Church are supported in their right to picket military funerals with obnoxious, hurtful, and factually inaccurate signs (if God hated fags, he would never have made them so fabulous). What some people call hate speech is, from the church's point of view, an informational picket. For onceMurr Brewsterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03422638986410813520noreply@blogger.com30tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-468223150447785936.post-38780364092349137462011-03-09T01:00:00.000-08:002011-04-01T01:21:53.471-07:00Murr: It's What's For DinnerI am proud to know someone from Newfoundland, a region whose existence has only been verified in my lifetime. My friend Sara is a repository of disturbing facts, among which is the revelation that people in her part of the planet eat Murrs. Or not murrs, precisely, but murres, the dashing and athletic sea bird with the dapper black-and-white outfit, shapely rear end and world-class sense of humorMurr Brewsterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03422638986410813520noreply@blogger.com47tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-468223150447785936.post-10165960900239459232011-03-05T01:00:00.000-08:002011-03-05T01:00:00.211-08:00ShreddedOur cat Tater is a litter box whiz, unlike our previous cat Larry, who was less fastidious. When it came to distributing poop, Larry was a Democrat. But Tater is robust and productive and not at all private about pooping. She likes you to watch. After she's done, she turns around, looks at her output, and then scratches away. Not at the litter, but at the little plastic-lined wastebasket right Murr Brewsterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03422638986410813520noreply@blogger.com45tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-468223150447785936.post-67937639043725046402011-03-02T01:00:00.000-08:002011-03-02T01:00:07.462-08:00The Blizzard of 2011 (11:30pm - 1:12 am)We had our big winter storm last week. You probably heard about it. It knocked American Idol right off the newscast. They had it pinned down a week in advance, too, which is unusual. Meteorologists are a fidgety bunch here. We're right at the confluence of a bunch of geology that likes to really bollix up weather prediction. We're in a bowl rimmed with mountains that wring the rain right out of Murr Brewsterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03422638986410813520noreply@blogger.com24