Highlights of 1894

In 1894 Rudyard Kipling wrote a collection of short stories called The Jungle Book. Actually, 1894 was a big year for innovation. Coca cola was served for the first time in bottles. It was green and didn’t sell well. Consequently, the bottlers decided to add caramel coloring.

The fact that it was green makes me think of the jungle which brings me back to Kipling’s book. Weird how that happens. Huh?

1894 was also the year Edison recorded the first ever sneeze on film. I doubt it was actually the first ever sneeze. Although, that would’ve been amazing. Nobody had ever sneezed, then suddenly good old Tommy E shows up with a new-fangled movie camera loaded with film. He turns it on, you know, just to see what will happen, then WOOSH he’s covered with snot and doesn’t know what happened. I mean, how could he know? It never happened before.

Next, he goes back to the lab, develops the film, and screams, “Hey, I bet that was a sneeze” Why did he call it that? Who knows? Perhaps the silver salts used in the process linked him to another place in the multi-verse which had sneezes.

Either way, this leads us to another creation of 1894; The frivolous lawsuit. Hey, that equipment was expensive, and it got boogers blown all over it.

Judge for yourself

I’m betting the judge, probably threw the case out, because it was ridiculous. Why would anyone take an expensive camera out into the world, just so someone could sneeze all over it? For my money the judge blamed Tom for being an eccentric idiot. Of course, he probably wondered why Mr. E painted his expensive invention with a lot of dried green crap. Face it, snot dries quickly, and the wheels of justice move slow.

The green, slime covered lens also reminds me of that jungle. And the court case reminds me of a book. We’re right back to Kipling’s epic. Well, since we keep coming back to it, I guess I’ll have to discuss The Jungle Book, by Rudyard Kipling. It’s either that or rewrite that whole beginning. I’m too lazy for all that work. So, we’ll run with it and see what happens.

Book review

Firstly, I have read the entire book, cover to cover, and there are absolutely no tyrannosaurus rexes in the whole thing. I know! I was shocked too. If you are a dinosaur lover I really can’t recommend it. Then again, if you like other animals as well, there’s a lot of them in there. So, you might want to take a look.

One of the andromorphic animals is a tiger called Shere Khan. He’s a villain, who wants to eat a young man called Mowgli. This might seem like cannibalism, but it’s not. Apparently, eating a man isn’t cannibalism is you’re not a man yourself. Even if you’re a tiger who can walk and talk like a man. It’s called the law of the jungle, and it’s very confusing. I just want to know one thing; What was Rudyard smoking when he wrote this thing? But I digress!

 Another animal in the story is a mongoose called Rikki-Tikki-Tavi. Admittedly, it’s a better name that Baby-Bun-Bun, but not by much. Supposedly, the thing was named by a British family. Why couldn’t he be named Edward. With as many times as the name shows up in the book, it could’ve been fifteen pages shorter if that mongoose was called Ed. Then again, the author’s name is Rudyard. You have to consider the source.

Now, Rikki-T-T was bonded to an English family who he swore to protect from a cobra called, Nag. I knew a short name was possible. Rikki eventually kills Nag and you think the story is over. Nope! Nag’s wife, Nagaina swears she will seek vengeance, and we quickly find out she is much smarter than Nag. It’s another law of the jungle thing. Thing is, it’s also a law of the Ohh! household thing.

One woman’s tale

My wife is ten times smarter than me and this I accept easily. What I can’t accept is the way she can jinx me with that intelligence. When we were dating, I had a car with no front license plate. Bac then this was illegal. That plate fell off two years before I even met my wife. Then we were out one night, she noticed it missing, and told me to fix it or I was going to get caught. Exactly three days later I was stopped by the police and fined because that plate was gone. I went almost forever without it, but she predicted my doom, and it was etched in stone.

Next, we were getting community assistance when my children were born. We were allowed to get fifteen ounces of this and thirty ounces of that. It was all quite regulated and hard to figure out. Consequently, I always played the ignorant husband card, and just picked up what I wanted. Then, when I got home, she’d ask how I got so much. When I told her, what do you think she did? Well, it wasn’t a hearty congratulations on job well done, if that’s what you’re thinking.

No! She told me I was gonna get caught and have to rerun the whole market. Now remember I’d done this for months without a problem. I actually had no fear anything was going to happen. I was wrong. The very next time I did the shopping, I was busted. The lady didn’t accept anything I picked out. I had to put it all back and do the shopping all over. What a pain in the rump.

That was then This is now

I’m telling you all this because I am now the proud owner of a new car. Remember my last three cars were twenty years old before they finally failed and I’m proud of that fact. Two-hundred-thousand-miles was nothing to me. Well, my old car just hit ninety-thousand. My wife saw that and remarked, “We’ll probably need to get a new one soon.” You guessed it. A week and a half later, the engine seized and a part of the drive train fell out.

Don’t panic. No one was injured. Between insurance and a warranty stating clearly this sort of thing shouldn’t happen. I got a new car. What bugs me is; How does she know these things? It’s really starting to scare me.

The other day she mentioned my computer was looking a bit old, and I just about preformed an exorcism. I lit pumpkin-spice candles and said some cool Latin words, like Crisco and Dominoes. I didn’t know what the meant, but the thought was there.

A saner man would’ve backed up all their files and sent their data up to the cloud. But who has that kind of time? Shaking rattles and dancing in circles is so much easier. Besides, those candles make the place smell so nice. You can’t get that from a file backup.

All these facts make this post some kind of message-in-a-bottle thing. If you don’t hear from me ever again, you’ll know what happened. So here are what might be my last words…

Why did she have to say anything?!?!