The long warm autumn has extended the deer tick season. Be careful. Lyme disease is not the only risk, bad as it is.
At a medical office recently an APRN began the treatment by trying a remedy she said sometimes worked with her teenage children: put soap on a cotton ball and rub it in counterclockwise circles around the tick, to “aggravate it out.” She said bar soap is best, but lacking it, she used lotion-style liquid soap. She started out doing it clockwise and the patient reminded her that she had said counterclockwise. She thanked him and reversed direction. No joy either way. So tweezers it was, and a one-dose oral antibiotic.
Some people put petroleum jelly over the area where the tick is embedded, on the theory that it will cut off the tick’s air supply, thereby causing the tick to pull out of the victim and swim up to the surface for air, where it can be picked off an put into a jar of rubbing alcohol kept around for the purpose. I have no information on this theory, but that’s what the comment section is for.
If you don’t want to get Ed McKeon angry, don’t comment under the name “Anonymous” unless your name actually is Anonymous, and wouldn’t that be a convenient coincidence that no one will believe? If your name is Anonymous, you may as well save yourself from skepticism and make up a false but realistic-sounding name, like Tom Flies.
By the way, deer ticks are not insects, but arachnids, like scorpions and spiders. Thought you'd want to know.
Old Scottish toast: “Here’s tae us; wha’s like us? Gey few, and they’re a’ deid!” Translation is vandalism, so have some: “Here’s to us, who’s as good? Full few, and they’re all dead!”
I saw the phrase “nonsense on stilts” and wondered whether it’s just a silly elaboration, like “nonsense in knitted pajamas,” or a real effort to specify a type of nonsense: tall and clownish. I’ve also seen the phrase “nonsense on steroids,” but I fear “on steroids” has become cliché.
Fragments from here and there, mostly unattributed:
“He was so precociously polite he turned to his mother at birth and said, ‘Thank you for having me.’”
“I wear my sunglasses at night because I can.”
“It were a dark an’ stormy night, an’ I were wagin’ me personal struggle against the darkness.”
“I’ve gone out there, made mistakes, and made it back. I’m going out again.” --Dushka Zapata
“May a fire twister eat the town you were born in.”
“Daddy, there’s a mean man at the front door who says he’s from the DEA and the jockey on the front lawn is made of heroin.”
“An Arlington man who prosecutors said sold heroin laced with fentanyl to two victims of fatal overdoses has been convicted on drugs charges.” What a salesman!
“A brinicle [brine icicle] is an underwater icicle occurring in the Antarctic. Brine at a temperature well below 0 degrees Celsius is extruded from the underside of sea ice and as it falls, seawater freezes around it, forming a column that grows down to the seabed.”
Mickey Rooney has returned to this life. Looks as if he’s had some work done.
Have you seen me? Jupiter kicked me out of the solar system four billion years ago and now I wander the galaxy lonely as a cloud.
Never use the word “comprise” in any mood, tense, or person. Most especially, never say “comprised of.” Don’t even ask why, just forget the word ever existed. Let it pass from the memory of English-speaking humanity.
“The people have spoken, and now they must be punished.” --Ed Koch, former mayor of New York City.
“Dear Hollywood Snooper: What’s up with Dorothy Kilgallen? I haven’t seen her on ‘What’s My Line?’ lately. --Fan of Classy Ladies
“Dear Fan: She’s been dead for 50 years, having shuffled off to Upper Buffalo on Nov. 8, 1965. Get out more.”
In 1936, Kilgallen competed with two other New York newspaper reporters in a race around the world using only means of transportation available to the general public. She was the only woman to compete in the contest and she came in second.
Kilgallen described the race in her book Girl Around The World, which is credited as the story idea for the 1937 movie Fly-Away Baby starring Glenda Farrell as a character partly inspired by Kilgallen.
Yankee taciturnity story. A man walks into his New England barbershop and greets the barber: “Hello, Joe.” The barber replies, “Why, Richard, nice to see you. Haven’t seen you around lately.” The customer says, “I moved to California twelve years ago and just moved back last week.” The barber says, “Y’don’t say.”
Aztec in the Right Direction. (Five words looking for a meaning.)
“Good Ole Tom” is an antiques and precious metals dealer with stores in Connecticut and Arizona and an Internet presence. Having seen his TV commercials in both states, I thought he was national, but it’s another case of “put not thy trust in colonels.” I think of the Connecticut stores as “Goode Olde Tom” and the Arizona stores as “Good Olé Tom.”
“My mom loved ‘The Odd Couple,’ so she named me ‘Oscar Felix Kulpa’ -- Kulpa's the family name. As a kid, they called me ‘Oscar’ or ‘Oskie,’ but I didn’t like it and insisted on being called ‘Felix,’ and it stuck. So now I go by O. Felix Kulpa.”
“I think of myself as ‘religious’ but not ‘spiritual.’” --Margery Gorrish
“Religion is like, ‘go, go, go,’ and spirituality is, like, ‘wooooooo!’’” --Undergraduate, major withheld out of a sense of decency
“I’m a natural leader. In fact, the other kids at school call me ‘The Big Meshuggah’!”
Humble Origins Dept.: “My mother was a maid and my father was a man.”
The Colonel Carries On #5
2015-11-14-Sat
2 comments:
Anon will reveal his truths anon. Presently anon will reveal his presence. Later, we will see you, alligator.
Alas, and alack, I am anon now, but will be, and am always Ed.
I have faithfully read every post written by the Colonel (that is, whenever his (military?) career allows him to write), and now I can finally say I learned something. In 1981, Stephen Sondheim presented the world with a little gem called "Merrily We Roll Along" (I'm sure the Colonel knows this was a musical version of a Kaufman & Hart play of the same name). Tragically for theatergoers, the show barely made it through two weeks before its untimely demise. (Damn the reviewers of the New York Times. Damn them.)
Throughout the play, three friends share a toast, "Here's to us, Who's like us, Damn few!", offered with irony which wanes to enthusiasm as the play proceeds (you see, the play runs backwards). Since Merrily was written in the un-annotated days before Rap Genius, each listener must cobble together their own understanding of the lyrics. I'm delighted to add this tidbit on a "Scottish Toast" to mine.
-A Nona Mouse
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