Warning : May contain more than your daily recommended allowance of randomness
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Author: Buffet o' Blog
Laughing is good for you. So this blog is a buffet of randomness and humor. Most of the content here is original and thus exclusive to this site. I encourage everyone to participate in the comments section -- it makes it more fun for everyone.
The other day I was mowing my yard and heard several cicadas “talking” to each other. I suppose it was talking. It definitely wasn’t singing. It seemed like a lot of noise. And it was LOUD! Just how loud are they when I can hear them over my lawnmower?
I wondered what they were saying to each other. They’re probably calling out for a mate. But what do they have to say? My guess is, “I’M IN THIS TREE!” And then another responds with, “I’M IN THIS TREE!” (Yes, the uppercase yelling is appropriate here, because they are definitely screaming.)
July 4th is a day we celebrate America’s independence with grilled food and fireworks. Many people go to community events to watch organized fireworks shows, which is usually a good time. But it’s also fun to shoot your own fireworks. It’s also quite dangerous. It’s easy to take it for granted that no one will get injured, yet kids get to play with little bombs.
A basic safety rule of fireworks is to not have the fireworks-for-later pile near the fireworks-in-use pile. This should be obvious. But obviously it’s not. LET ME SHOW YOU SOMETHING! (Referencing Fire Marshall Bill here, from the TV show In Living Color. He didn’t make this video, but this is about how it would’ve turned out if he had been there.) Watch this:
That’s an epic fail at a front-yard level — way more epic than anyone should experience. But what if a whole warehouse of fireworks caught fire? It happened just a few days ago in California. This video is a LOT of fireworks going BOOM.
Everybody likes to talk about the weather, but nobody does anything about it…
And somebody really should, with this current “heat dome” of heat and humidity. But, nothing…
I would, but unfortunately, our R&D department is woefully underfunded. It takes a substantial amount of money to build a weather dominator-inator. You can’t just go to the local store and buy the parts you need since they aren’t invented yet!
Meanwhile, while we wait on the millions in donations we need, we’ve had an idea before that should be considered. For places where the heat is oppressive — say, anywhere with a heat advisory in effect — the government could provide free ice cream sandwiches. It’s really a win-win solution. It would boost morale of the citizens (voters), and the politicians providing this would gain some popularity and be responsible for something good. I know, the issue is how to pay for it. The cost wouldn’t have to be great, if they leverage their buying power to get discounts (which is entirely possible). But they’d have to cut out the red tape on the middleman and not enrich themselves, which is most unlikely. After all, just this year, DOGE and Elon Musk with his chainsaw have cut thousands of jobs, slashed billions from budgets, which could potentially do some good (although the haphazard way it was done was incredibly inefficient and irresponsible), yet the current budget bill will lead to greater debt. So what exactly is going on where they can save billions of dollars yet spend trillions more? The math doesn’t add up. They haven’t told us where all that money is going.
Sorry, got on a political rant there. Our government is inconceivably wasteful, so no free ice cream sandwiches. In fact, your groceries now cost more, despite the campaign promise of Donald Trump to bring grocery prices down on day one. Instead, everything costs more.
Oops, started ranting again. But while I’m on the topic (not really), here’s a random pivot to chew on: I saw an interview with someone who had traveled to various other countries, and he said the main difference in politics in America is that we tend to blame the “other party” while in other countries they hold their elected officials currently in office responsible for what’s wrong. I can see that…
Enough ranting. It’s hot outside, and I sure could go for an ice cream sandwich… So I’ll go get one myself. I don’t depend on politicians to make my day better. (That would be a disaster!) We all have the option to do things to make our day better.
Is there anything you will do today to make your day better?
Some historians say the British Empire was once the largest empire of all time, even larger than the Roman Empire. One of my friends said this was because they drank a lot of tea.
I don’t know if this hypothesis can pass mustard*… [Ed. note: What does mustard have to do with tea?!? Nvm, see the explanation below.] But let’s consider the possibility. (After all, sweet tea is awesome, arguably the best drink out there.)
So if tea gave them so much world-conquering power, what happened? Obviously their empire is not so large now. Well, once their influence spread around the world, everyone knew about the wonders of tea and so there was more balance. I suppose that could explain that part. That’s good enough for me. (Further debate is beyond the scope of this article, but feel free to comment if you have more insight.)
Disclaimer: if you are a student in school, your history teacher may not know about this theory. So ask them about it before putting it as an answer on your homework or tests. If they tell you otherwise, go with their answer. As Bart Simpson once had to write many times on the chalkboard, “I will not expose the ignorance of the faculty.” 🙂
* This is an eggcorn**. The saying is supposed to be “pass muster”, which originally referred to a military inspection. I misquoted it on purpose to be funny, but if you don’t know the original, it’s probably not funny. (But it is still random, regardless, so there’s that.)
** I just learned the word eggcorn. How have I not heard of this before? I enjoy occasionally misusing words and phrases (for humorous purposes), so I’ve been using them for years without knowing what they were called. Why didn’t I learn about this in school?*** Anyway, an eggcorn is a misunderstanding or mishearing of a word or phrase. Some common examples are “mute point” for “moot point”, “ice tea” instead of “iced tea”, “I could care less” which means you do care, “intensive purposes” for “intents and purposes”, “escape goat” for “scapegoat”, etc. But sometimes phrases are improved by eggcorns, like “chomping at the bit” instead of “champing at the bit”, and “free reign” instead of “free rein”. (Here’s a link for more about eggcorns.)
*** So I looked up the origins of the word eggcorn, and it was invented in 2003 when someone asked a linguist why some people say “egg corn” instead of “acorn”. He suggested calling that type of word/phrase an eggcorn, and the usage has become proper, with eggcorn being added to the Oxford English Dictionary in 2010. So that’s why I hadn’t heard of it — it hasn’t been around that long. Also, it’s similar to a mondegreen, which usually applies to misheard song lyrics.
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