Category: Observations

This last week, we visited the family cottage.  Specifically, it’s my wife’s mother’s father’s, who bequeathed it unto two of his daughters upon moving into assisted living.  It’s up near Wausau, WI, which means it’s a looong way to drive.

But 10 hours in a car left me plenty of time to pontificate on how much the radio stations in Midwestern states suck.  Interspersed amid the 24/7 bible and country stations are a selection of oldies, but not good classic rock oldies–random oldies.

What I found interested was the ubiquity of these random oldies, as if DJs everywhere had attended an annoying music summit and agreed upon a selection.  For example, as we approached the western border of Ohio, on came Dexys Midnight Runners’ “Come On Eileen”, a song I feel is safe to classify as a one hit wonder.

This time, it made me smile briefly.  I commented to Liz that the song was an odd choice, and we discussed it for a moment, for as I stated, the car ride was long, so conversational topics tended to arise out of any minor stimuli to break the tedium.

Later, somewhere in Indiana, the song came on again.  I thought that was unusual, since by then we were cruising different radio stations.  Then we heard it again in Illinois.  At that point, we were in the heart of the Midwest, and though the nation might hate Ohio as a whole, at least we have a more diverse culture.  But in Illinois, we didn’t have more than one rock station available, so we endured it.

Then we heard the song again in Wisconsin, and at this point began to debate why this song was suddenly so popular again.  All I can conclude is that, since it released in the 80s, and music in the 80s was terrible, it’s a song for which the aging disco-era weirdos feel nostalgic.  Who knows?

–Simon

To all dog owners out there: if you can, catalogue every single dog photo you’ve taken and compare that to the total number of photos you have saved.  For me, it’s 239/4803.  So, 5% of my photos are dog photos.  I suspect that that figure is fairly normal.

But enough of my rambling.  You want to see dog photos!

–Simon

Okay, I admit that’s my first reaction, and I’m a terrible person.

But, you know how cool those kids in grade-school thought they were for having to go down to the office and use their asthma inhalers?  Sometimes I get the feeling that allergies are, if not Munchhausen Syndrome, possibly psychosomatic.  And I question the prevalence of specific allergies to a given time period.  Why do certain allergies suddenly appear and everyone is affected, from all ages?  I could follow the logic if an unknown element had instantly been introduced into the environment, but that’s not the case.  I could theorize that there’s latent genetics at play, only just now impacting humanity from years of exposure, but that wouldn’t explain why these allergies effect people of disparate age groups.

Gluten allergy?  An allergy to processed grain–the staple that allowed humanity to transition from neolithic hunter/gatherers into permanent farmers?  The event that allowed us to discover beer?  That has to make you feel pretty pathetic as a human.

But I must jest at the flagship ridiculous allergy: peanuts.

This got me thinking: perhaps we’re just so numerous as a species, there’s a statistical probability that anything we could possibly think of, someone has an allergy to it.  To confirm this theory, I searched for the first random common edibles I could think of, and appended them with “allergy” into Google.  As it turns out, people are allergic to soy, fluoride, and mint.  It actually became a challenge to find something to which people don’t claim an allergy.  There’s even a banana allergy.

Still, after they confiscated my daughter’s yogurt because it had a compartment of nuts to mix in, I felt compelled that, on the next random event this school drags me to, I’m going to first rub myself down in peanut oil and then shake everyone’s hand.

–Simon