857. bob and son at the annual craniac bass tournament

856. tough times for bleeding hearts

man this is just brutal.
being a bleeding heart that is.
i need uplifting and i need it quick.

just saw the soloist and what a pathetic, sorry state of affairs our cities' homeless are in.
a thousand points of dark.
this morning i caught a short documentary on a woman in africa trying to save baby elephants, orphaned after their mothers are killed by poachers for ivory.
they'll be gone in my lifetime for sure—some baby boomer legacy that will be.
young lost souls shooting up in the streets of portland, oregon.
child sex trafficking in thailand.
genocide in sudan.
the slums of india.
the plight of refugees throughout the warring world.
shrinking polar bear populations and rising oceans.
octomom for chrissakes!
even susan boyle—bless her timid little heart.

why it's enough to make a progressive pushover like me forget to refill the wine cooler, or worse, take the prius in for its scheduled oil change.

855. the verizon bill and actionable intel

the monthly verizon bill can be a cornucopia of actionable intel.

for instance, when the text messages for a certain family plan member, who shall go nameless, jump to 1700 out of network, not only do we know the certain family plan member is in the throes of young, romantic chase but that the targeted, brainless, boneheaded nincompoop of said chase doesn't have verizon as his carrier of choice.
and when smug, we're-on-to-you references are bandied about the dinner table to the certain plan member as casually as passing the salt and pepper, intel sources are never revealed so as to serve well the pretense that parental units are omniscient—leaving the certain family plan member chock-a-block of shock and awe.

853. the refrigerator has gone too far!

i have a long fuse but there are some things that just ... oh man ... tick me off!
and right now it's the refrigerator!
but it's going to get its soon enough—you can take that to the atm!

it all started a few days ago.
just when ya think you know your refrigerator, it pulls something like this.
it's been turning that interior light on whenever i close the door, because it's not on when the door is open.
and i've tried to catch it—god how i've tried—by sneaking up real quiet like and swinging the door open.
but it's too fast for my middle aged reflexes, and turns it off before i can see it on.

i'm telling ya, if i were twenty years younger, i'd catch it for sure.
but i'm not.
so i thought i'd fix the bastard real good, and took it up a notch.
i pulled the plug out so the light couldn't turn on anymore no matter how hard it tried.
but to spite me i noticed it started warming up the food.
well nothing burns my fuse faster than some one or some thing messing with my food.
no one!
no thing!

that was the last straw!
so i called customer service down at stan blangley's appliance store where i bought the darned thing, and they told me that they've seen this kind of behavior before, and short of paying for an expensive exorcism there's not much that can be done, and worse, there's no telling what it will do next.
so we agreed to replace it in the middle of the night when we might catch it sleeping.

and all i have to say is, adios amigo!
i'll leave the light on for ya!
not!

852. from the cranelegs pond mailbag

barnyarddoor19 asked, hey bob i want my html code to be more funny. you're a humor guy. any suggestions?

great question barnyard, and you came to the right place for an answer.
i too have wrestled with this very same issue.
i mean let's be honest, html is bo! ring!
about two years ago i wrote a novel in html about a wingnut and washer that i lost on a trip to pennsylvania dutch country, and quite honestly it was like, good night irene.
that is until i spruced the html up with some humor.
and it was quite simple really.
give it a try and see if it works for you barnyard.

change all the "p", "/p" controls to "pee", "/pee".

oh man, that's still killer funny.

i know, i know, i know!
it just comes natural.
what else can i tell you?
you have yourself a good day!

(from the files) 544. new school expressions

i said, and that's why elephants surround their young.
benny said, but what does that have to do with the price of t-shirts from china?
i said, don't you mean the price of tea in china.
then benny said, that's old school.
then i said, i guess so. actually, i never cared much for the expression anyway.
benny asked, me neither. that's why i made it new school. now what were we talking about?
then i chirped, jerry, jenny and michael! don't you pay attention?
then benny said, don't you mean jesus, joseph and mary.
then i said, that's old catholic school. i changed it up to be new secular school.
benny said, yeah, i see that. pretty good.

and once again, a rousing flare up of new school expressions ended in a draw.

851. who says keaton doesn't have a sense of humor

okay okay okay!
i know that it may seem like keaton doesn't have a sense of humor with the frozen pork chops and all the manstake corrections already.
but she does.
a very precise one at that, as demonstrated by the following.

i asked for a drum set for christmas.
i told her it doesn't have to be big.
a small set would do just fine.
all i wanted was be able to play the drum solo to "inna gadda da vida" again, just like i used to back in the sixties on my old slingerland skins (sorry, drum talk).
and that's what i got.

the iron butterfly never sounded so heavy, man!

849. old peculiar habits

i was just thinking about how i used to clean up the house before the cleaning folks came over to ... well ... to clean up the house.
it's been over eight years since i used such a service, and i'm a better person for not.
the truth is i was never a fan of the idea anyway.
but i have good reason to believe i'd resort to the same pattern given the chance, which leads me to believe old, peculiar habits don't die, they just hibernate.

848. bob revealed

it's been over two years and some 850 posts.
and what do you know about me really?
not a whole lot.
it's time to share a little.
oh baby.

1. with the exception of shooting joan peterson just below the eye with a paper clip in second grade, i'm hard pressed to come up with any other regrets.
decking jimmy "the weasle" russo in my office when he threaten to tell our tyrant boss fat eddie williams i was late with a deliverable might be the only other one.
oh wait, there was that really dumb bobism when i told my fainting, 7 month pregnant wife at a bloomingdales' jewelry counter, "you're embarassing me".
now that is one i'd like to forget but will never be able to, and rightly so.
i'm lucky i'm not pushing up weeds for that beaut.

2. i like to say "oh baby" a lot.

3. i can't remember lyrics to save my life, a pretty bad deal for someone who plays guitar and sings those great sixties classics—always having to replace forgotten words with those lame made up sounds that i think will fool those around me, but never do.

4. i have self confidence but it is fleeting, and it's been on hiatus for some time now.
i'm hopeful it will return soon.

5. the word failure is not in my vocabulary.
i prefer to use others like "totally thorough, ass-wupping defeat".

6. all i've ever been up to is figuring out how to improve the relationship i have with this fickle partner called life, since the outcome of a totally thorough, ass-wupping defeat would not bode well.
not at all.

847. best conversations

the best conversations i have usually occur when they start with subject a and meander on a four hour word association path to subject z, at the end of which the question posed is, "how in the world did we get on this topic?"

and interestingly enough, i find when these conversations occur while i'm as alone as dick cheney at a skeet shoot, they are just as satisfying.

539. home alone - episode six

this home alone stuff is getting pretty darned good.

i was rifling through the fridge in search of anything that might be snackolicious.
you know, some loose pepperoni, a forgotten chunk of cheddar with muddy green, fuzz patches, possibly a lost turkey drumstick from thanksgiving,
oddly shaped bulges of aluminum foil are usually good candidates.

nothing!
this health kick keaton is on is starting to kill me quite honestly.

i was poised to turn my attention to the pantry—maybe an expired can of mandarine oranges would be my prize—when i spotted a small jar of chunky peanut butter tucked in the back corner behind an unused half gallon of soy milk (part of keaton's healthy eating initiative).
hmm—
a couple of slices of bread, a generous slab of peanut butter, a hearty sprinkling of dominoe's light brown sugar, and bam!
the staple of my formative years.
now if i could only find a six ounce carton of orange drink, i'd be living pretty, pretty large.

ah yes, this home alone stuff is baring big rewards, i just needed to let it unfold.

846. Spring's Gift

(now for something really different and no smirks lightly!)

Spring’s Gift

My shoulders droop with unnoticed ease.
My thoughts curtail me, taunt and tease.
The world seems harsher than the day before,
As with each new day, just more and more.

Worries plenty to devour my soul.
Conflicts abound, there’s never a lull.
My body complains each step I take,
As I blindly walk this path I make.

The air has grown dull from days of rain.
The dog even heels, oddly restrained.
A sudden pull tests my reaction;
Just a fleeting canine distraction.

Then, as if placed by the hands of God,
A newborn fawn sleeps curled in the sod.
I gently stop to search for a sign,
Something suggesting, “Nothing malign.”

On queue her head lifts, a weak ear twitches.
Black marble eyes stare, her mood switches.
I watch in awe as she stumbles to stand.
How can something so small be so grand?

Bone legs snap bent to high grass she tries,
No mother in sight to hear her cries.
Weary and shaking, she falls into weeds,
Wraps in a ball, protection she needs.

The dog cares less as head tilts to scent,
While I worry about where her mother went.
How long will she lay in this defenseless spot?
Do I dare intervene? Do I dare not?

I pull on the leash. It’s time to leave.
She watches us go, somewhat relieved.
I fret that night and into the day,
‘Til we return where the gift last lay.

My eyes sweep the grass with hope for some signs.
Something that hints she met nothing malign.
The dog sniffs the blades to no surprise.
“She’s likely fine,” I try to surmise.

Man's best friend starts pulling, time to go.
I concede it is, ever so slow.
Back to the harshness and so much more,
But unlike days past, less than before.

845. looking back

if i'm always looking back, it's only a matter of time before i'll run into a tree.

(from the files) 342. blog non-sequiturs

every day i get a report that identifies where people came from the previous day to get to cranelegs pond.
it’s suppose to be a tool of sorts but it beats the heck out of me what to do with the information.
anyway, the usual culprits are google searches gone astray and a few folks who have bookmarked the site (mostly immediate family members).
having said that, there is a small group of visitors who originate from other blogs.
and i have to tell ya, some of them are very interesting non-sequiturs, like yesterday.
someone came from a japanese self bondage blog.

so under the guise of an inquisitive mind, i went there to see if i could figure out the logical linkage?
i could not.
instead, i became fascinated—in a ‘train wreck’ sort of way.
all i can say is that there are some real lonely, partially clad people out there with nothing but ropes, wild imaginations, and plenty of spare time on their hands.
now the whole thing was written in japanese with those crazy letters, so i’m not sure what was going on, but i’m telling you, it looked nuts.

so i told keaton about this and she gave me one, albeit dumb, possible linkage.
she told me ropes rhymes with dopes of which i'd be one!

other than her mastery of proper preposition placement, i wasn't very impressed with her stale supposition.

842. reincarnation and gay marriage

if we are all reincarnated, then based on population numbers, many of us must be reincarnated from the same person.
assuming that guys are reincarnated from guys and gals from gals, if by some law of gay attraction two reincarnated guys (or gals) who don't know they are really reincarnated siblings meet and want to marry, what then?

this is one sticky wicket that is giving me pause to rethink my rather cavalier acceptance of gay marriage.
either that or i'm watching way too much of the maury povich show.

(from the files) 643. another mantask done manly

i had to move the tv across the bedroom.
a rather mundane mantask you'd think.

not when i'm involved.

first, the bedroom sits at the top of the house—the third floor.
the issue: the needed extra length of tv cable, which comes in from the roof outside, was in the clutches of a death vine that had coiled around it like an anaconda.
it wasn't budging unless i got out on the roof and cut the cable free from the clutches of the coiled branch beast.

so out i went into the day, armed with my usual arsenal of inadequate tools: a hedge clipper whose blades haven't been sharpened since tiny tim wed miss vicky, and a termite infested wooden ladder to get me to the roof below the snagged cable.
what faced me was a real-life, manlogic brainteaser—sixteen feet to scale, six feet of ladder.

i laughed!
child's play!

i used the ladder to climb on top of a large heating oil storage tank that sits along side the house.
once atop, i pulled the ladder up, collapsed it, balanced its two legs precariously on the rounded storage tank top, and then leaned the upper part against the side of the house.
i ascended the ladder to the top once again and lifted myself up the remaining four feet to the roof.
once there, i engaged the barked monster in hand-to-limb combat, eventually freeing the cable.

the navigation up and ensuing battle?
not so bad.
the descent down in dizzy victorious delight?
not so good!
as usual, i hadn't quite thought this solution through to completion.

the short of it, an hour later i was back on terra firma, albeit scraped raw from a slow suicide slide down the shingles to the lifeline ladder sitting four feet below, leaving any dizzy victorious delight peeled away and dangling from the gutter above for all to see.

but the tv was moved successfully, dammit to hell!

and in the end, nothing could diminish the manpride i felt in another mantask done manly.

not even keaton's wild screams of dismanbelief as i calmly explained my bloodied appendages and general tattered appearance!

836. gladness turns to sadness in march madness

as a member of nova nation, there is no gladness but only sadness in march madness.
donning my villanova t-shirt, sweatshirt, and hat with my lucky nova hot toddy mug in hand, i sat down precisely at 9:13 pm saturday night for what i was certain would be a great basketball upset—a nova thrashing of the semi-pro north carolina "tarheals" (a rather appropriate alternative spelling).
by 9:54 pm saturday night, it was apparent that the only thing going to be upset was my stomach.
with eight minutes remaining in the game i did the unthinkable.
i went to bed early—a no good, nova nation nudnik.

and don't give me a hard time either buster!
i can't take it anymore.
enough already.
i'm too old for this.
let me be a poor sport in peace and quiet.

now all i can do is hope that michigan state takes care of business tonight, which pretty much is the kiss of death for the spartans.
such is my lot in life.
as woody allen so aptly put it, i'd never want to join a club that would have me as a member.
the sport corollary holds so true, no one should play on a team that has me as a fan.
alas, is there no probation to this life sentence i serve called bob's world?

oh well, there is always next year (that and the cubs winning the world series any time soon).

833. let him dance and eat cake

it's one of those home alone days.
and everything is going wrong.
the weather, the car, the financials, the dog, the intestines.
everything.
and yet all i keep saying is, let him dance and eat cake.

i don't exactly know to whom it is i'm speaking because this house is as empty as my skull three days running now.
not even sure i know what it means to be honest.

except it does put a smile on that face of mine, which gives the floury mess in the kitchen and scuff marks about the rest of the house a noble purpose.

832. wow! sent in by loof lirpa!

geez, thanks to daily cranelegs pond visitor fave, loof lirpa, from bentleyford, idaho for sending me this! what can i say? i had no idea.