Friday, March 20, 2009

First Day of Spring



HOORAY - March 21 +/- a day marks the time when the sun’s direct rays move into the northern hemisphere (which is where we hang out) and as such, marks the first day of spring. Like a Vernal Equinox, 'eh? Since LikeTelevision is from North Carolina - we always take this opportunity to watch Granny’s Spring Tonic, where Granny cooks up the seasons first batch of “shine” - what we call moonshine round here. Peaches, strawberries, plums or other fruits are floating in a super sweet brown liquid stored in a ball jar. Now before the folks at ATF get all riled up and bring Janet Reno out of retirement with her flame thrower - it is all gone. A very good year too. I think Granny is hitting the jug a little quick as the shine tastes best about 2 years after it is brewed. And since we live near Mooresville, the true home of Nascar and moonshine running drivers from days gone by - yep, we do have a clue.

More spring related content, Maybe I’ll Come Home in the Spring, featuring Sally Field as a washed up hippie who decides to come home after the commune style of life wears thin. See David Carradine as real turkey and Jackie Cooper is the tough but loving father, well kind of. He is also a bit older from early Hollywood days with the Little Rascals (see Bear Shooters for a sample).

Another fun cartoon - is To Spring, where some crazy elves use all kinds of colors to paint the landscape. And who could forget the Raggedy Ann classic, Suddenly It’s Spring. Finally - check out Betty Boop doing a bit of spring cleaning.

Thursday, March 19, 2009

Bud the Cowboy

I got the following story in an email and thought it was actually funny enough to read and pass on. It is called Bud the Cowboy.

A cowboy named Bud was overseeing his herd in a remote mountainous pasture in California when suddenly a brand-new BMW advanced toward him out of a cloud of dust. The driver, a young man in a Brioni suit, Gucci shoes, RayBan sunglasses and YSL tie, leaned out the window and asked the cowboy, "If I tell you exactly how many cows and calves you have in your herd, Will you give me a calf?"

Bud looks at the man, obviously a yuppie, then looks at his peacefully grazing herd and calmly answers, "Sure, Why not?"

The yuppie parks his car, whips out his Dell notebook computer, connects it to his Cingular RAZR V3 cell phone, and surfs to a NASA page on the Internet, where he calls up a GPS satellite to get an exact fix on his location which he then feeds to another NASA satellite that scans the area in an ultra high resolution photo.

The young man then opens the digital photo in Adobe Photoshop and exports it to an image processing facility in Hamburg, Germany. Within seconds, he receives an email on his Palm Pilot that the image has been processed and the data stored.. He then accesses a MYSQL database through an ODBC connected Excel spreadsheet with email on his Blackberry and, after a few minutes, receives a response.

Finally, he prints out a full-color, 150-page report on his hi-tech, miniaturized HP LaserJet printer, turns to the cowboy and says, "You have exactly 1,586 cows and calves."

"That's right. Well, I guess you can take one of my calves," says Bud.

He watches the young man select one of the animals and looks on with amusement as the young man stuffs it into the trunk of his car.

Then the Bud says to the young man, "Hey, if I can tell you exactly what your business is, will you give me back my calf?"

The young man thinks about it for a second and then says, "Okay, why not?"

"You're a Congressman for the U.S. Government", says Bud.

"Wow! That's correct," says the yuppie, "but how did you guess that?"

"No guessing required." answered the cowboy. "You showed up here even though nobody called you; you want to get paid for an answer I already knew, to a question I never asked. You used millions of dollars worth of equipment trying to show me how much smarter than me you are; and you don't know a thing about how working people make a living - or about cows, for that matter. This is a herd of sheep.

Now give me back my dog.