Charity's Church Mouse

There's a mouse creature in our copier. Charity saw him first; she saw him scurry across the room and then we couldn't find him. Next day: Harmony was pulling out a jam and spraying parts off with canned air when we heard her scream bloody murder. The mouse was right there on the fuser. Before she could grab him by the tail and scarf him down (I'm sure she would have if she was quick enough) he jumped back into the machine.

The Mouse in the Machine by Josh Anderson
I pulled out every drawer of the copier and opened every door. I couldn't figure out where he went. He is still in there....living. One day his going to get caught in the wheels and there will be a bloody mess and color copiers of a SMASHED bloody mouse. Hmmm, I'm hungry for cheese.
Charity's own account

When Do I Get to Be a Robot?

That ole' Toby Robot...yessiree....he is cool. Calm. Collected. He never gets overly involved. I like him...he's kind of my role model. I'm tired of being soft flesh. I'm tired of caring. When do I get to be a Robot? This is how I will look. I will be called P198-FJ007Z and you won't be able to hurt me.

I Just Spoke Forth Loudly

You know how sometimes when you've been pent up all day either in your office or even in your home and you just need to get out? You know how sometimes you then see something a little puzzling and fix that little something, how you then talk to it as if it were a person and you do so out loud and in a rich Australian accent? Well I just did that. I saw my iTunes library where it displayed the "In The Dark Eternal" goth radio station on live365 that I was listening to and it said end of broadcast. So I said to it "End of broadcast? I'll show you!" and I restarted the station. Then I wondered what AV Bear would think of me talking to no one. He didn't say anything. Well, what do YOU think? Commence comments.I drew this broom, K?

What Do You Think of That??

If I knew you, the reader, I would come in when you least expect it and slap you across the face. While you held your cheek, looking at me in bewilderment I would stare at you blankly for 10 seconds and then proceed the rearrange the furniture in your room or office. Right as I was about to leave I'd just say "What do you think about that?"
See, if you could float about 200 ft. in the air and watch life happening, you'd see all these cars driving neatly where the should and parking in spaces aligned for them. You'd see people going where their told and sticking to pre programmed time schedules. BORING!! Where is the creativity??? When I was little I wanted to do things my own way. Not in a rebellious way, I just wanted to have my own slant on everything I did or had or made. Somewhere along the line, boring adults tell you 'you have to do this or that. You have to do it this way or that'. Without even realizing it we live life in a box! And I'm tired of it.
Things are going to change and Charity is documenting it:
http://ubercharity.blogspot.com/2007/10/social-experiments-at-work.html
Oh and this explains it without words:

Soul in the Brain

Do you ever think about where your soul actually resides? I think by the process of elimination we know it must sit in our head. I mean, think about it, much like automobiles, all of our parts are interchangeable. Even an organ as important and intricate as the heart can be transplanted! Amazing! But the one accessory that we can't order from the hospital for replacement is the brain. If you switched someone's brain, you'd switch them.
Imagine that...let's say you're in an accident in which your body was beyond repair while your brain remained unscathed. Meanwhile a patient in another room lies in a coma with a perfectly usable body. Has this ever been tried before??? Isn't that creepy? They should make a movie about this (or maybe they have...actually...I'm sure there is something like this out there) So you wake up a week later and the first thing you notice is your hands....they're not yours.... What? what the heck??? You start freaking out as you begin to examine your entire body. You start sweating and your heart is racing as you climb out of the hospital bed and find a mirror. What you see in the mirror sends a shock of horror through your being. Your face doesn't match the one you have seen in the mirror in all of your memories. Can that really happen?
So I wonder what happens if they plop your brain into an animal...say a golden retriever. Why won't that work? All the wires don't pug in and match up I suppose.
What about those "wires", the nerve attachments.... if we figured that out could we maybe make wireless connections? A brain in a lab somewhere controlling a body downtown. The body wonders into a candy shop where there is a low hanging display for gummy bears. The controlling brain misjudges the body's height and hit the head on the sign making a very hollow sounding "thump".
At this point others in the candy shop are on to the fraud. Nobody's head sounds that hollow. In fact, when they look at the body in the eye they can tell there is no soul. OK I'll shut up now-this is enough imagery for your week leading up to Halloween :)

Rat's Ass

I was listening to Folk Radio on Live365 when the commercial broke through the Ethel Caffie-Austin's John the Revelator asking "What is the difference be you and the millions of millionaires out there?" at which point my brain screamed I don't give a rat's ass! The reason behind the reaction isn't my point, but it's because one, are there really MILLIONS of millionaires out there? and two, are you kidding? the difference between me and them is they have a lot of money! And my reaction of not caring is because they're going to feed me a line of BS about how I can be a millionaire too. The Bible warns us against "Get Rich Quick" Schemes. ANYWAY! My point is, why did I say I don't give a rat's ass! ? Where did this term come from? Can I logically conclude that giving a rat's ass means caring? Should I say that from now on when someone tells me how hard their week has been, should I say "Oh man, that sucks...I give a rat's ass" ? And why a rat's ass? Are the origins of this idiom based in truth? Is there some kind of ancient custom of people cutting the hind end of of a rat to show their benevolence to someone??? Why don't keep the custom going? There could be a special bin where biology majors toss "used" rats after dissecting them and they could sell them as Benevolence Rat's Asses.

Life Lessons and the Art of Snowboarding

I picked up snowboarding way later than most of my friends, so I got to watch them doing 360 tail grabs while i was still falling on my ass every 5 seconds. I learned quickly though and my first season on a board my buds were already taking me on tree runs. I put some good nicks on my board, good bruises on my butt, shoulders and hands from hitting trees. One of my buddies, after noticing how sap covered I came out of the trees, told me some of the best advice I have ever learned that carries through to others sports and even life itself. "Pick a path and look where you want to go, not at the trees!" It was hard to get myself to do it-how do you not look at that tree you're about to collide with and hard!? But I quickly found out he was so right. When I ignored the trees, suddenly I wasn't headed for them anymore.
A couple weeks ago I took a motorcycle training course where we were instructed to weave some offset cones. At first it seemed nearly impossible not to hit the cones. Sure enough though, the instructor told us "You will go where you look! If you look at the cone you will hit it!" So when I applied my snowboarding skills and looked through the obstacles at my path, suddenly it was easy.
I think we can apply this to life. Don't get so caught up in our present struggles to the point we're not looking at the overall picture of where we're headed. Wow, this is way more inspirational than the usual JWU blog...now I need to write something really stupid. I'll be right back.