Southpaw Jones

Is This Interesting?
Thoughts/feelings that just might not matter:

Good morning & good Monday to you and yours.
The weekend was brisk and lacking “tsk, tsk.”
Now I’m at work, dressed like a jerk.

On Saturday, Sweet Maggie joined her fellow members of Spank Dance Co. to perform at Eeyore’s 44th Birthday Party, a fine Austin tradition of odd folks in odd outfits. The ladies really classed up the joint, and we enjoyed people/pet watching afterward. That afternoon, it got warm enough for us to take our first leap of 2007 into Barton Springs. Refreshing and soul-awakening as always! I can’t wait for more sunny, summer days of floating and gloating.

Sunday, we celebrated the one-year anniversary of our first date with an Italian dinner and American ice cream. Maggie makes me happy, and being with her makes a lot of sense to me, so I apologize if today’s blog makes you want to gag.

Let’s now take a moment to update the Southpaw Jones Virtual Excursion des Pieds. I got 13 miles in last week, 12 on the trail, 1 on the treadmill. It’s up from recent weeks, but I’d like to report a bigger number than that. I’m trying to get across the state line, you see:

Week 1: 30 miles to Taylor, Texas
Week 2: 27 miles to Rockdale, Texas
Week 3: 20.7 miles to Caldwell, Texas
Week 4: 22.3 miles to Bryan/College Station, Texas
Week 5: 21 miles through Gibbons Creek Lake
Week 6: 24.4 miles to Hunstville, Texas
Week 7: 22 miles to Trinity, Texas
Week 8: 24 miles to Crockett, Texas
Week 9: 16 miles to Kennard, Texas
Week 10+11: 30 miles to Rusk, Texas
Week 12+13: 28.6 miles to Mt. Enterprise, Texas
Week 14: DUD
Week 15: 13 miles to Lake Murvaul, Texas
Week 16: 6 miles to Gary City, Texas
Week 17: 13 miles through…

CARTHAGE, TEXAS!

I virtually ran right through Carthage holding nearby Louisiana in my daydreams. They call it the Best Small Town in Texas, and its population hovers around 23,000. Carthage is home to the Texas Country Music Hall of Fame which inducted The Gatlin Brothers and Billy Joe Shaver in 2006.

It is also the final resting place of “Gentleman” Jim Reeves, who sang beautifully until dying in a plane crash on July 31, 1964. His favorite dog, Cheyenne, is also buried there in the concrete circle around Reeves’s grave. He rests to the side and slightly behind his master, following loyally even in death.

Join me next Monday, when I may just make it out of Texas!

Rhyme Time!
One clue whose answer consists of two rhyming words:

One prominent part of a living beast.
Highlight here for answer: [creature feature]

Online Museum of the Week
MoFA: The Museum of Food Anomalies:

Thanks for sharing, Jodi!

Quotopia
Freshly-picked quotes from the ol’ reference collection:

When I hear a man preach, I like to see him act as if he were fighting bees.
Abraham Lincoln

Plumb, Plumber, Plumbest
Signs o’ the times from Austin’s singing Jewish plumber, Herman Bennett:

Thank you, come again!
southpawjones.com
southpawjones.com
myspace.com/southpawjones
E-mail southpaw@southpawjones.com
©2007 Southpaw Jones. All rights reserved.

Is This Interesting?
Thoughts/feelings that just might not matter:

It’s Friday! From all of us at the Gazette, have a great weekend!

I found a fun little site that generates random adjective/noun combinations, like “sexy blogger” or “hot lefty.” Here are a few that came up along with my reactions thereto.

Amateur envelope
You lick it; it recoils and giggles.

Temporary breakfast
Well, I never considered permanent breakfast, which is exactly my problem…I don’t dream big.

Tired helicopter
Really bad news or a popular Saturday morning cartoon character.

Part-time victory
Who has the time these days to dominate 40 hours a week?

Rear settler
This is either a new infomercial exercise device or a member of a lasting civil union.

Inland solo
“When obnoxious Roy brought his guitar to the beach, we all forced him to experiment on an inland solo well past the dunes and hearing range.”

Rhyme Time!
One clue whose answer consists of two rhyming words:

Inability to catch a large ocean mammal.
Highlight here for answer: [whaling failing]

Online Museum of the Week
Photographing Squirrels:

Quotopia
Freshly-picked quotes from the ol’ reference collection:

A man’s work is nothing but this slow trek to rediscover, through the detours of art, those two or three great and simple images in whose presence his heart first opened.
Albert Camus

Thank you, come again!
southpawjones.com
southpawjones.com
myspace.com/southpawjones
E-mail southpaw@southpawjones.com
©2007 Southpaw Jones. All rights reserved.

Is This Interesting?
Thoughts/feelings that just might not matter:

They found a planet out there! A planet larger than Earth with surface temperatures between 32 and 104 degrees. Scientists are calling it “habitable.” There may be water! There may be life! There may be oil, gold, and hot, blue, alien women who think “Earth men are perfect just the way they are.” Fat cats are licking their chops at the possibility of sucking another planet’s resources dry. There is evidence of “killer waves” and “fat snow” and “quaint picnic spots.” It has a definite lack of reality TV!

But there’s a problem. Time Magazine reports that the hot new celestial sphere has been “unpoetically dubbed Gliese 581c.”

Gliese 581c.

This is why they need a highly-paid consultant and songwriter at NASA. Just off the top of my head, I can think of 10 better names for our new, friendly planet:

1. Starbucks #581c

2. Awful Lot o’ Dirt 581c

3. Bluto 581c

4. Pottersville 581c

5. Lands’ Beginning 581c

6. I Can Has Aliens 581c?

7. Round & Ground 581c

8. The United States of America in Exile 581c

9. Fat Cousin Space Ball 581c

10. Second Chance 581c

Rhyme Time!
One clue whose answer consists of two rhyming words:

Arachnid with greater girth.
Highlight here for answer: [wider spider]

Online Museum of the Week
Photographing Squirrels:

Quotopia
Freshly-picked quotes from the ol’ reference collection:

The squirrel that you kill in jest, dies in earnest.
Henry David Thoreau

Plumb, Plumber, Plumbest
Signs o’ the times from Austin’s singing Jewish plumber, Herman Bennett:

Thank you, come again!
southpawjones.com
southpawjones.com
myspace.com/southpawjones
E-mail southpaw@southpawjones.com
©2007 Southpaw Jones. All rights reserved.

Sales Pitch
A bit of practice before I go into advertising:

Umbrellas
by Southpaw Jones

Umbrellas!
Get your umbrellas here!
Mind the foggy, might turn soggy!
Get a grip on the hook tip ‘neath the canvas lip that blocks the drip!
It’s comin’ down!
It’s comin’ down!
God’s judgment no longer cometh in the form of flood.
That there rainbow reminds us of such.
But moisture from the gulf has made NO SUCH PROMISE!

Getchur umbrellas heeyur!
Your pals will be wet, and your enemies will be soaking!
But you will not fret, you’ll be bone dry and smoking!
Yessir, everything from your scalp to your cigarettes to your genitals
Will find solace when your arm waves one of these futuristic doo-dads at the sky.

Say to that storm cloud, “No more!
I am no Neanderthal, foraging for berries
With trembling, sopping hand!
I am a civilized city-dweller
With places to be
People to see
Babies to kiss
Meetings to miss
I ain’t got time for your tomfoolerishesness!”

“Hey, guy, did you teleport to work today?”
That’s what they’ll ask!

“Do you have some invisible force field power?”
They’ll beg to know!

“Do you shrink wrap yourself? How do you breathe in there?”
They’ll shake off their wetness and look at you with amazed, gaping pie-holes!

It’s the umbrella!
Buy one today!
I know what you’re thinking:
“How much? $500? $847 plus tax?”

No, my friends, not even close.
Today only, you can get this standard drug store umbrella for
THREE EASY PAYMENTS OF $75.50!

If you ain’t dry, it’s time to buy!
If you be a Poppins, you may even fly!

Feel free to roam with your second home!

UMBRELLAS!

Do it With Style
Fun words to say while belching, stretching, or answering the phone:
SLAPDASH
PICACHU
SAUCEBOX
RACONTEUR
ASPERGUM

Online Museum of the Week
Photographing Squirrels:

Quotopia
Freshly-picked quotes from the ol’ reference collection:

A man must live like a great brilliant flame and burn as brightly as he can. In the end he burns out. But this is far better than a mean little flame.
Boris Yeltsin

Plumb, Plumber, Plumbest
Signs o’ the times from Austin’s singing Jewish plumber, Herman Bennett:

Thank you, come again!
southpawjones.com
southpawjones.com
myspace.com/southpawjones
E-mail southpaw@southpawjones.com
©2007 Southpaw Jones. All rights reserved.

5 Facts, 1 TX Town, 1 Springsteen Lyric & 1 famous Jew
In no particular order:

1. The first harmonicas emerged in Vienna.

2. Oatmeal, Texas.

3. Vienna is home to a large brewery called Ottakringer.

4. Beer, in some form, can be traced back almost 5000 years to Mesopotamian writings describing daily rations of beer and bread to workers.

5. Monday when the foreman calls time, I’ve already got Friday on my mind.

6. The first literate societies developed in Mesopotamia in the late 4th millennium BC.

7. Oprah Winfrey started her book club in 1996 with The Deep End of the Ocean.

8. Shell Silverstein.

If I Had a Million Dollars
Unnecessary products that inexplicably tempt me:

Angel Kitty USB Keyboard
(somehow attached to a French maid outfit?)
15,750 Yen ($140.00)

Online Museum of the Week
Photographing Squirrels:

Quotopia
Freshly-picked quotes from the ol’ reference collection:

She dwelt among the untrodden ways
Beside the springs of Dove,
A maid whom there were none to praise
And very few to love.
William Wordsworth

Plumb, Plumber, Plumbest
Signs o’ the times from Austin’s singing Jewish plumber, Herman Bennett:

Thank you, come again!
southpawjones.com
southpawjones.com
myspace.com/southpawjones
E-mail southpaw@southpawjones.com
©2007 Southpaw Jones. All rights reserved.