Wheels on Fire - Cautionary Tales
Ether St. Vying
I don't know why they do it ... but most motorists, when driving over
the triple train tracks nearby, slow down to a crawl. It's much less
jarring on the vehicle's suspension to just cross at normal speed ...
but no. Just ahead of me a trio of tail-gaters is waddling across the
tracks. And I think to myself "At the rate they're going, if I follow
them, I could get stuck on the tracks with a train bearing down." So I
wait behind the solid white line, and sure enough, within seconds of the
thought, the red lights start flashing, the bells start clanging, and
the barrier arms come down ... just as the third car makes it over the
third set of tracks. Going nowhere fast is preferable to going nowhere -
fast.
Instead of gardening, I'm about to get in my car and drive to work. I
see my neighbour, Middle Mike, across the road, and go over to talk to
him about the spare succulents that he has for me. We've just begun to
chat, when we both catch sight of a huge, dead branch plummeting from
the silverleaf maple without warning ... and crashing into my driest
flower bed. It's a good thing I wasn't out there watering it. If the
branch had fallen on me, it would have knocked me down, maybe even
knocked me out ... or worse.
As I'm cheerfully driving home from the chiropractor's, westbound on the
highway, I can't help but notice how congested the eastbound lanes are
... and I can't figure out why. After all, today is the day of the big
Rolling Stones SARS concert, and with more than 430,000 attending the
event, the roads are remarkably free of traffic. Up ahead, I see a
plume of menacing, thick, black smoke billowing across from the other
side. When I get close enough, I can see a car on the shoulder, its
engine engulfed in flames ... and fire fighters leaping from their
barely stopped truck. I put the pedal to metal and hightail it out of
there ... almost expecting to hear an explosion behind me .... which,
luckily, never comes.
Ether St. Vying
georg
Some days, it's just a wonderful feeling to still breathe.
-georg
Ether St. Vying
And sigh in relief ... for having been on the 'wrong' side of the road at the
right time.
Ether
Poetic Badgers
news:3F28D46C...@garden.yes:
Your third eye was watching out for you.
--
Poetic Badgers
"You can’t beat a Babka." (Elaine Benes at the bakery)
Bill Cleere
"Poetic Badgers" <poeticbadgers@spammenot> wrote in message
news:Xns93CB6F211FC...@129.250.170.98...
Oh my God, don't use that expression, you'll get Dean
showing up with his hideous ascii snuh art and....
....Oh, hi Dean....what's shakin'? What's takin' place?
Everything is mellow? Solid, man.
Well, OK, then, that's cool... What were we talking
about? Oh, you know, nothing much, same ol' stuff.
-- Bill Cleere
Poetic Badgers
news:3f2c...@trollnews.myvnc.com.POSTED:
Hideous? Hideous you say? Snuh is the deepest, most thoughtful expression
of the reptilian brain.
Bill Cleere
"Poetic Badgers" <poeticbadgers@spammenot> wrote in message
Say, you've given me an idea for one of the earlier chapters
of my in-progress Inquiry into the Origins and History of Snuh!
-- Bill Cleere
Poetic Badgers
No doubt it'll be a noble and lofty-yet-accessible tome.
--
Poetic Badgers
Bill Cleere
You may rest perfectly assured on *that* score.
The apparatus alone should run some two or three
hundred pages, counting footnotes, bibliography
subdivided into endless subdivisions, appendices,
prologues, Advisories To The Reader, afterwords,
and I don't know what-all else. The main body
of the work, should the reader chance to be able
to locate it 'midst the impedimenta referred to
above, will be a compendious and thorough review
of the entire topic, complete with scholarly
excurses upon the latest controversies over whether
Snuh was known to the ancient Hittites and Jebusites,
and all that sort of business. There will be no end
of fun and wisdom both for the scholar and the general
reader. Best of all, Oprah will not mention it.
-- Bill Cleere
"What does not kill me softens me up for
succeeding blows which surely will, and the
sooner the better." -- Friedrich Nurtzshe