MY NEW INVENTION

The other day I saw a short news item on TV that concerned a white-haired, 82-year-old man who was a runner. I pricked up my ears but quickly saw this man was a real runner - not a jogger and certainly not a wogger.

In addition, he ran the high hurdles and he really was serious about it. He would get down in the classic starting position and run to the first hurdle and soar over it. And he was 82 years old. I'm almost 82 years old and I can't do that, but I think I could if I started out small. After all, my first day wogging I barely made it around the track. The secret is to start small and gradually increase. I thought I could start with a strip of paper on the ground and gradually increase it, a strip at a time, until I was hurdling a whole ream of paper. But then what? This led me to think about inventing the Furdle. That's more than Flat but less than a Hurdle.

I think the mechanism of the scissors jack might be suitable.
Each day a small turn of the screw would increase the height until, without realizing it, a person would be hurdling at Olympic-hurdle height. I explained this idea to my lady here and I think she, not being a wogger, didn't understood the idea. When I mentioned finally getting to be able to hurdle the highest setting she asked,"What good would that be?" I explained how handy it would be if a person were being chased and came to a low fence. A person could go right over it. I don't think she understood that either because she just shook her head and walked away. Maybe it isn't for everyone. Maybe it's just for that old guy on TV and me.

I'M BACK WITH GOOGLE'S NEW MAPS

Google is at it again.

They have a new map program that is now available, though it is the beta version right now. I was very impressed with the new look when compared to what we are used to with Yahoo. I tried looking up the high school where I go wogging each morning. I just typed in the intersection and the city and state and it came up.

Click on images to enlarge


The sliding scale on the left allows zooming in to find street names and such.

I found the accuracy to be nothing short of amazing. When I entered my street address it even put the flag on the proper side of the street. (That's the side we live on -- The Proper Side)

Personally, I could do without the cloud effect as I don't see it adding anything except cute and surely by now we have enough cute to go around.

By the way, the map shows the school located in the middle of an intersection. For those of you who might wonder, "No, I do not now, and never have, done my wogging in the middle of a busy intersection."
(If you feel a pressing need for a dictionary definition of wogging just click here.)

MEA CULPA

Just a short note of apology here for any of you who happened to come looking for me. As General Douglas MacArthur said during world War II, "I shall return."

I am currently working on establishing my own web site which eventually will be located at http://www.oldprof.com.

There's not much there right now but I'll let you know when I have something. Right now, I am about at 2nd grade level in learning the HTML language needed to set this thing up. I'm finding it fascinating but time consuming. In fact, I just finished importing my Brazilian Volleyball story to my web site and though it maybe crude and possibly even ugly, it's mine!

So, I'll see you later, I hope.

The Old Professor

P.S. As an afterthought, if you would like me to notify you when my new website is ready I would be honored to do so. Just go down to the bottom here, click on COMMENTS and give me an e-mail address. Thanks.

BRAZIL & WOMEN'S BEACH VOLLEYBALL

I wanted to share a thought with you about something you (and many millions others) may have missed.

As you might guess, I recently have spent a lot of time watching the Olympics, especially Women's Beach Volleyball. Yesterday during the Gold Medal match between USA and Brazil I noticed something no one I know of has noticed. As you know these women wear brief bikini bathing suits which, to me, are quite attractive. There is a bottom part and a top part. The USA team uniform says "USA" on the top part. What to you think it says on the top part of the Brazil women's uniform? Right! It's says "BRA".

This made me wonder what it's like in Brazil. Do ordinary people walk around with hats that say HAT on them or pants that say PANTS. Weird. I know what you're thinking -- I meant maybe Brazilians are weird. I decided to check this out. What better place to start than the President of Brazil.
Currently he is Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva
and I found a picture of him.

Would you believe this? Even his TIE!

President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva
It must be true!

A CASE FOR WOGGING AT A TRACK

Almost every morning I go wogging. A wog is slower than a jog but faster than a walk. (If someone can invent a word like “blogging” why can’t I go with “wogging”?)
Of course, there are several options open to me when I do go wogging but I choose to do my wogging at the local high school running track in Carmel, CA.

It's a very attractive place to start any day.

There are several reasons I feel track wogging is better that street wogging. For one thing, the track is a measured distance. The one I use is exactly one quarter of a mile around the oval. That's the distance in lane number 1. Lane 6, where I usually wog, is almost one tenth of a mile more every four laps.

Knowing the exact distance allows for planning the distance I will wog that day. This eliminates that situation where a wogger might end up so far from home that he can’t get back and needs to use his cellphone to call a cab. I hate it when that happens.

Then there is the fact that the track is a flat surface and doesn’t present potholes and other obstacles which might cause one to fall and then while lying there have some smart-ass high school kids drive by and yell, “What’s a matter old man? Can’t get up anymore?” I hate it when that happens.

An important factor to me is there are no dogs allowed at the track.

This completely eliminates that problem where a person might be wogging past a house and the resident dog becomes upset and chases the wogger until he needs to jump over a fence and the dog grabs his pant leg and almost pulls his pants off and then the automatic sprinklers come on and the wogger gets soaked. I hate it when that happens.

Of course, being at a school track there is almost no problem with the police assuming the wogger had just robbed a nearby convenience store and then making him stop and both cops, with guns drawn, jumping out of their car and yelling “Put your hands on top of your head where I can see them!” I hate it when that happens.

And perhaps the most important advantage is the track is quiet. There are no cars and a wogger can just quietly go around and around with nothing particular to think about except possibly what his next blog might be. Sometime he can’t even think of that. I hate it when that happens.

A TSUNAMI IDEA

The other day, once again, I was working up a good sweat while wogging my way around the oval track as I do almost every morning. I find this activity leaves my mind completely blank and susceptible to new ideas. My latest idea concerns the victims of the recent tsunami disaster. If, by some remote chance, you are unfamiliar with what a tsunami is, please click here to find a definition as well as the pronunciation if you have sound available.

I decided to start my own small relief fund.
I am calling it:
TSWEATING FOR TSUNAMI TSURVIVORS

Each day I wog I just put a dollar in a special glass I have created for the occasion. Tsomeday when there is tsufficient money to help the tsurvivors tsignificantly I will tship it to them tsomehow.

SOCIAL SECURITY SYSTEM SAVED !!

So now we know the Social Security System will be bankrupt in a year 2000 something. Of course it will. Why? Because people are living too long, that's why. Back when the system was first started, a person living to the age of 65 was not as common as it is today. For years we have known that the primary cause of preventable deaths was cigarette smoking. That has now been replaced by obesity and the main reason for that has been a consistent campaign to reduce cigarette smoking, either by legislation or by prohibiting advertising.

Perhaps if we could bring back the advertising of 20 years ago we might be able to solve the problem of so many people living so long.


Do you remember the super-masculine Marlboro Man who often was the handsome cowboy?






Or at least in the healthy, rugged outdoors.








And then there were the billboards proclaiming that some fool, "Would walk a mile for a Camel."



And let's not forget the filters. We could use the old Lucky Strike billboard, which proclaimed, "Show me a filter with taste and I'll eat my hat."

And my last suggestion would be to increase the government subsidies for tobacco farmers. The money our government currently spends for these people may seem exorbitant now but when cigarette consumption picks up again they certainly will need all the assistance they can get to keep the production level up and hence, the Social Security System alive and well.

Are you listening Mr. Bush? It could work.

P.S. All of the people shown above are now dead and have no worries about Social Security.

I THINK THIS IS UNUSUAL, EVEN FOR ME

Here is an unusual thing I ran across while cruising the Internet. It's a picture of a couple who are obviously elated about something. I have blacked out what that "something" is. What do you think it might be? Using the size of these people as a base for guessing, would you guess there might be a giant-size hamburger they have just received? Or might it be "a bundle from heaven"? Could it be a tall ice cream sundae made with all 31 flavors?

(Scroll down a little to see)











Well, it might not be as interesting as you expected, but here's an unretouched (really!) picture of what they are so excited about.

It's a toilet! But a very special toilet. It's an oversized toilet equipped with, of course, an oversized toilet seat made for, what else but oversized people. This thing of beauty is manufactured by the Great John Toilet Company and their web site now has it on sale for $1329, which is marked down from their usual $1899 price. This includes shipping in the United States.

The people shown in the ad probably paid a lot of extra money for what they put into their bodies and it seems that ultimately they must pay extra for what comes out also.

In the event that you are seriously interested you can see this toilet and several others at the Great John Toilet Company web site.

WHEN I WAS SEVENTEEN, IT WAS A VERY GOOD YEAR: YAH, RIGHT!

Usually when I am wogging (walking/jogging) I listen to music from my MP3 player. There's one thing about an MP3 player, when the battery dies the music stops, period. It doesn't fade out or slowdown. It just stops. Today it stopped on the first lap so I was left with going around and around the track with nothing but my own thoughts. This is a dangerous thing.

I thought of my friend, Rafael, who recently wrote telling me it was his 34th birthday. As he said, "Twice 17".

Frank Sinatra used to sing a song that went:

When I was seventeen
It was a very good year
It was a very good year for small town girls
And soft summer nights
We’d hide from the lights
On the village green

I thought about my being 17 years old. It seems that is supposed to be a wondrous age. For me, not so much. I recall it as being one of the most uncomfortable years of my life.

The year I graduated from high school I was 17. My high school years were rather undistinguished to say the least. Although I was avidly interested in all kinds of sports, I only was a member of the Debate Team. As far as I could detect that didn't make a very big impression with girls, but then, nothing I did seem to impress them. Not only had I failed to maketh one lie down in green pastures, I didn't even know where any green pastures were.

When I finally did leave school I had to go to work. I didn't like that much either, especially when I discovered I needed to start paying for things myself. I still don't care for that much.

World War II was looming and when I thought of it, the uniforms were nice but I wasn't all a crazy about having someone shoot at me.

So, not being successful with girls--I guess they were called "women" by then--and not seeing myself as a roaring success in the work field, I decided I would try to be smarter than anyone else. Still being 17 years old, I enrolled in evening classes to study engineering at Northeastern University. It was just my luck to catch a calculus instructor who didn't seem to recognize my goal of being smarter than anyone else. Since the grade he gave me was no real indication of how smart I was, I repeated the course. I discovered that the second time through the course that this particular instructor was no more cognitive than he was the first time. I decided right then to disassociate myself from engineers as they obviously had no awareness of hidden talents. At least mine.

When I was 17 my life was so boring that I had a religious problem. I was a Catholic and made my confessions on a regular basis. At least I tried to but had trouble finding enough sins to confess. I used to go through all of the, "Shalt nots" and couldn't find many that pertained to my lifestyle. As an example, we had a neighbor, Mr. Fowler, and I couldn't even manage to covet his fat wife, though I tried just to have something to confess.
I even lied in the confessional once just so the next time I could confess to lying.
I think the priest in the confessional must have been frustrated. He would often say, "Is that all?”
To which I would reply, "Yes Father."
"Are you sure?"
"Yes Father."
"Are you sure you have committed no more sins?"
"Yes Father."
"Nothing? Nothing at all?" By this time he sounded incredulous.
"Nothing Father."
Then there would be a big sigh, followed by the usual "Five Our Fathers and Five Hail Marys."
Sometimes there were other people waiting to confess and there were times I thought I could hear them giggling.

So, as I look back on being 17 years old, I wouldn't want to do that again for anything. Maybe it would be nice to be able to run as fast as I did when I was 17, but I would rather be my age and not have any reason to run.

I need to go put a new battery in my MP3 player before I forget and need to go through this whole thing again tomorrow.

HALF IS BETTER THAN NONE

This morning while wogging I had a thought and I still think it was a cute idea.

Since we now have a new Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice, I was thinking about her having to fill the shoes of the former Secretary of State, Colin Powell. I was going to find a picture of Ms. Rice and, using my graphics program, I planned to attach a pair of rather large shoes to her image.

So, I went to Google and did an image search for Condoleezza Rice. Surprisingly I found 1160 pictures of Ms. Rice and, as far as I can see, she has no legs. All of the pictures were upper body shots.

Thinking about Franklin Roosevelt pictures where he never showed his polio-ravaged legs, I suppose it is theoretically possible that we now have a Secretary of State with no lower extremities.

Perhaps that really wouldn't be too bad, after all, there isn't much heavy lifting involved and we do have the part that talks.