POOL ANYONE?

If the billiard parlor game wanted to increase its popularity, they should adapt this alteration to the old pool table. Now that game could be fun.

Of course, the participants would get to choose whose noggin would go into the facial cage. As far as I can tell by the picture, there would be four slots to fill. Think of the possibilities.

Keeping in mind that there would be no injuries to the ones whose heads are encased. Well, it's just the perfect opportunity to rattle one's cage.

I'd like to suggest a national personality, a politician, a neighbor, and a co-worker. I'll let you fill in the blanks. And no I won't tell you mine.

Ok, just one. The personality. I live in Phoenix Suns' land where Sir Charles Barkley once played. I don't care for him. Never did. But it seems as if I'm in the minority in the West. He's up there in many people's top ten list. I won't pontificate on my reasons for my dislike, but if he would agree to step inside the cage, I'm afraid I'd want a well chalked cue stick to play in the game. Well, at least to tune in to watch on national tv in prime time.

So with tv's vast waste land of shows out there, I have an idea for entertainment that tops Deal or No Deal and Are You Smarter Than a Fifth Grader. Or maybe we could combine all three shows into one.

I SEE A DOG

I don't know. I guess some might see a bottle. A human form. A universe or at least a planet. The CBS eye.

But that's the way it is. "What does he see in her?" But it's not always about attraction.

All of my English teachers until I reached college were women. Most were excellent. Many were unmarried sticklers. Most breathed sentence diagramming, which was always easy for me, but menial and without purpose as far as I could see.

My first college instructor was Tiger Jack Traver. He called his classroom "The Tiger's Den." Long time readers know I have talked about him before. While other students focused on his eccentric ways, I saw a real encourager. He was the first teacher that really complimented, encouraged, and overrated me. He made me feel smarter than I thought I was.

Sometimes in Frosh Comp, I know I didn't write as well as the grade he gave me. And he was not an easy grader. But I felt my grades were inflated. At the same time, he encouraged (there's that word again) me to do better. So I did.

Probably more than any other teacher, John Traver believed in me more than I did myself. I never told him that. But I think he knew.

Had he had us write on the picture, and I would have written something about dogs and tied it into literature, I would have gotten an A. Other teachers would have said it was obvious to all that it was about women. And given me a C+.

Thanks for the inspiration, Tiger. I hope you, Faithful Reader(s) had a Tiger in your history, too.

FARM GIRLS

I love farm girls. At least the one I married.

You see, I have trouble with breakfast. Trying to eat healthy. Mine usually consists of 2-3 cups of coffee. Black. The only way it was intended to be consumed. Along with a boiled egg and two pieces of toast. Spread with low fat butter and 1/2 sugar Concord grape jelly. On one piece I sprinkle cinnamon which is supposed to counter the 1/2 sugar jelly.

That's about as healthy as I can get. I should add that as long as I have naval oranges growing on our tree, I add one of those.

Now, to why I like having a farm girl wife. We never had chickens in the city, though I knew of one place that did just a little over two blocks away. So the only ones I saw were the Easter chicks dyed green, if I remember, and fawned over by two neighbor boys back in the day of insensitivity. Even as a young kid, I remember thinking that wasn't right. And I didn't pay much attention to them. But part of that might have been envy, too. As our youngest grandson would say, "Who could know?"

But I had no idea why some egg shells peeled easier than others. I hate it when they shatter into thousands of little pieces and are time consuming to pick apart. I like to have a clean split of at least half the shell, but that doesn't happen all that often.

So I posed the question to the farmer's daughter who explained that it's all in what the chicken had to eat. The better the grain, the easier to peel.

There are lots of other reasons to marry a farm girl, but I can't tell you anymore than that, or, as they say, I'd have to kill you.

I WONDERED

What should I write about today? Actually it's pretty exciting, pretty liberating to do a daily blog and share with a few. Some days there are things I think need to be said. Other days I find a picture to inspire a topic. Reflections, nostalgia, experiences common to many are other things I choose to write about.

Toss in sports, politics, entertainment, travel, a poem or two and you have entered the On the QT Zone, paraphrasing Bill O'Reilly.

Mr. O'Reilly would like the picture of the Rosie O. Terror that is posted. She is a pinhead according to him. His new book, A Bold, Fresh Piece of Humanity is a good, quick read. But I just finished his Culture Warrior, written in 2006, and it is excellently frightening. (I don't think I've ever used that expression before, and I think this will be the last time.) But it is accurate. And highly recommended.

Like a lot of entertainers, Rosie O. started out good in "A League of Their Own". As a member of The Rockford Peaches' baseball team in the Tom Hanks movie immortalized by the line, "there's no crying in baseball," she was outstanding. But then Hollywood must have gotten hold of her turning her upside down, inside out. Hey, it happened to Hanks, too, and scores of others. Who bought in to Scientology and radical viewpoints that want to obliterate traditional American values.

So that's what occupied my mind this early morning. Well, besides my one month old granddaughter, my pending golf game today, and our son who's trying to pass a kidney stone. He may not look like Rosie, but if his stone is anything like mine 22 years ago, he feels like she looks.

THE SPHINXTER

What else would one call a person who would kiss the sphinx in a trick photography shot? And what other objects do people kiss?

For one, a basketball. Before letting go a long set shot back in the 50's before someone got the idea to shoot a jump shot. Before somebody got the idea to slam dunk. I wonder if George Mikan ever dunked back then?

A basketball court has also been shown affection by Michael Jordan and MTV High Jon Knoche after playing his final game in the oldest high school gym in the state still being used for boys' basketball, Changnon Gym. I just recently heard that after making a trip to MTV to see our new granddaughter.

I've also witnessed golfers give their golf ball a kiss after going into the hole. But golfers are weird. Some jump into a greenside pond after winning a tourney. What's up with that? I guess it's the equivalent of the Gatorade slosh to the winning coach in a big football game.

Of course, the Blarney Stone is another kissable object. When we visited, I just kissed where thousands of other lips had gone before me. Not our daughter, who really stretched it out going deep into the belly of the rock. Where no lips had ever gone before. At least to her knowledge.

Kissing is something else. I remember being told a story of a man who kissed his cow, followed by the comment, "there's no accounting for taste."

IN THE BLIND SPOT

I found this picture of a cover of a magazine called The Blind Spot. It's for artists. But it got me thinking about different blind spots.

Food in between teeth for one thing. Black sesame seeds on bread appeal to me. But I know when I indulge that there will be leftovers in my teeth. Sometimes with freshly ground pepper on lettuce wedges--another of my favorites. But unless someone tells me, I'll go around the rest of the evening displaying black soot marks nestled against my teeth. That's a blind spot.

Another blind spot is what consumes us. In conversation especially. If we could as Robert Burns said "see ourselves as others see us," how would that change what monopolizes our language? Honestly, I don't believe that complainers, braggarts, reactionists, or 'holics of any kind (a 'holic is one who infuses his interest into every conversation no matter what the current topic is) realize the scope of their communication. The oneness of it.

The final blind spot is the mirrors of an automobile, or one of the most famous blind spots. It's true that they exist between rear and side mirrors. But what gets me about car makers is how is it that no one can make a mirror that is accurate? "Objects may be closer than they appear." And why? Just make a mirror that shows what's there. What's the problem? Or put a funhouse mirror on there, well, just for fun, if what you're showing is not really what it's reflecting.

Compared to the other two, I suppose a speck of pepper or seed(s) isn't as serious as I thought when I began this entry.

I'VE LOST MINE, TOO ON OCCASION

Of course, I'm talking about my head. Recently I have had to keep it, too.

The last two days of our Caribbean cruise were at-sea days. As if any of us needed more sun time. But that's what you get when sailing from Virgin Gorda to Miami.

The first day our daughter went to the pool deck at 7:15 AM to claim our three spots. We arrived shortly afterwards to begin our day in the sun. Many cruisers claimed their choice spots by throwing down a book on a lounge chair to reserve it. Some were gone for quite some time. Thus, the worker in charge of the pool deck, a stereotypical prissy looking librarian of the 50's type, proceeded to pick up the books, towels, whatever was used to reserve and stack them in a pile. Opening up seats for the people who were actually there.

Pool arguments erupted when the owners of the books returned to have no seats. Some of the newbies didn't even know what had happened; they had just grabbed a seat.

Day 2, my wife and I arrived at a dark 7:00 AM to snag our seats. None were set up yet because of the New Year's on-deck party. We waited patiently. While one of the two pool guys set up chairs all around us. But not where we wanted them. I offered to move three chairs. He told me he would get to it. Our daughter joined us. I headed for some coffee. When I returned, still no luck. My two girls headed to breakfast.

Finally he brings out the chairs, but doesn't have the covers on them. I sit in a two-seater and wait next to the three I've claimed. A woman walks over, examines the middle one. I comment, "I've saved those three." A mumble from her at 8:15. "I've been here since 7 o'clock," I state. Wondering why she has to have one of the three we had had the previous day. I mean there were several others available.

"You can't save three. Where are the other two?"

"At breakfast."

"Sure they are."

"Well, they are," I respond, now getting ticked.

"You weren't here at 7:00 because I didn't see you when I came down at 7:30." She continued. "They'll come and take your books like they did yesterday."

Wrong again. My final salvo. A lame, "No, they won't."

She claimed the fourth chair. I wanted the third, next to her, but my wife sent me to the opposite end after she returned.

Actually I had one more response when my girls came back. Well within earshot, I shot, "I'd ask you how breakfast was, but I was called a liar when I said that's where you were. I hope it was good though."

There. I got in the last word. But I didn't wish her a Happy New Year. Maybe next time.