Leezer

Monday I listened to NPR and the featured program - presumably in the spirit of Halloween - was an “expert” in the field of ghosts and other paranormal phenomenon.  Because I am often encouraged and excited by the unexplained and mysterious, I decided to listen.  Most of the callers had urban myth-type stories, like my cousin had this friend who had a friend who was in his dining room and one of the light bulbs exploded and then another time he heard footsteps on the stairs and when he went to look there was no one there. 

Now these types of experiences may, in fact, have been perceived by the observer, but they’re hardly ghost stories.  I sat through five or seven of these types of stories, then  a woman called about a trip she had taken to a nearby resort town.  She and her husband visited a popular bar one night and a few tables away from her a man sat, very drunk, and all alone.  He couldn’t pick up his glass without missing it, he was slumped over the table, and he was talking to himself.  The woman was amused by the town drunk, so she took a picture of him with her digital camera. 

 Some time later she had her pictures developed or printed them off of her computer or whatever, and in the picture were two hands reaching down around the drunk’s head.  I couldn’t figure out from the woman caller what the hands were doing there, if they were on the man’s head or just “floating” above it.    The woman assumed she had somehow double exposed the print, but she nonetheless took the camera from shop to shop asking how the hands got there, and no one knew.

 What is the point of this? I’m not sure, which is the same way I think of these types of phenomenon.  When science (read: the camera store guy) can’t explain something, does it mean it’s unexplained or that we just can’t find the explanation.

 P.S.  I had a pair of glow-in-the-dark praying hands I got from the catholic church my friend went to.  It scared me so much at night I had to put them in a drawer.

Timvansant posted this bosomy woman on his site the other day and questioned whether right brain vs. left brain puzzles are worth the time.   If you see the woman spinning clock-wise - as the thoery goes - you’re right-brained.  Counter-clockwise and you’re left-brained. 

I can’t for the life of me see this woman spinning any direction other than clock-wise, which according to not so conventional wisdom means I have a dominant right-brain and therefore live in a fantasy land, forgetting to eat for days at a time while sculpting unicorns out of lard and dried boogers.  I’m unable to read a map, preferring instead to divine my way to and from various exotic locales using a water witching-device. 

I asked my seven year old which way the woman is spinning and she too answered clock-wise.  It is easier to buy the right-brained theory as it pertains to my daugher, however, as she is appropriately enmeshed in all things fantasy and imagination.  Her best friend Lizzy, (fittingly called “Dizzy” by my three year-old), agreed with our clock-wise conclusion.

I stared at the woman for a few minutes longer, trying to see her spin the other way but found myself distracted by her fabulous boobs and well-proportioned lower-half.  “If I amped up the boobs just a bit and did a few more miles a day on the treadmill,” I thought, “I’d be a dead-ringer for that silouette.”

So I’m curious as to how accurately such a puzzle can predict behavioral tendencies.  While I do tend to leave the details to someone else - details concerning just about everything, which makes it difficult to locate my car in a parking lot when there’s no one around to jot down that little detail in a journal for me - I have managed somehow to survive in a left-brained world.  Hardly a captain of industry, I nonetheless received my letters from a prist-idge-ous university and have gained the respect of at least one or two people in my chosen field.  I am able to stumble through rudimentary calculus, and I can name “objects”  (See box, below.  Are there really people who can’t name objects?  They cut paper, they’re sharp, kindergarteners use duller versions of the same thing.  Damn! What are they called?).

Maybe there are two answers to this riddle.  The inner me is definitely on the right-brained side of the continuum, but the me others see is on the left. 

How about you?

there’s no mistaking

iggy should have a good home

but stop the sobbing

Life is really too short for boring passwords, especially passwords containing a combination of letters, numbers, and symbols.  If you’ve ever forgotten your password on JCrew.com, for example, it will be reset and e-mailed to you, looking something like this:

            RXZ7219*N4

Today I had my annual physical and was told by my clinic that its online service is now available which allows patients to make appointments online and ask questions of their physicians.  To join the service, all I needed to do was ask the receptionist for a password.  Although my mouth and what comes out of it is my bread and butter, I really don’t like talking to strangers more than is minimally necessary, so I thought making appointments online sounded fabulous.  I approached the rather dour woman at the front desk who smelled like a baked potato and wore flip flops and asked her for a password. 

“Here you go,” she said without looking up from her Readers Digest article entitled, “What Your Handwriting Reveals About Your Love Life” and handed me a slip of paper upon which was written this password:

AHDBL _ _ */ GJU78

“What if I want to change it?” I asked.  “What?” the receptionist asked, breathing through her mouth at the same time.   “I don’t like this password.  I want to change it once I’ve logged on.  Will the system let me do that?”

The woman looked at me as if I’d asked her to pull a banana out of her nose.  “I don’t know.  What do you want to change it to?”  She asked. 

“Well if I told you then it wouldn’t be a password anymore, would it?”

“O.K. well I can’t help you with  tha-”

“Vulva.”  I interrupted.   ”I want to change my password to vulva.” 

“I don’t know if you can have a password without numbers of symbols.”  She informed me.

“Oh.  How about  ’Super Vulva 2007?’ “

“Maybe you can call our system administrator.  I think I have the number right here”  and she dug around in the pencil drawer of her desk, pushing aside soy sauce packets, a packet of Trident gum, and lip gloss, and handed me a scrap of paper.

I haven’t attempted to log in on the clinic website yet, but I won’t keep a password I can’t remember.  And I understand the point of alpha/numeric/symbols, which is presumably to prevent hacking.  But I doubt a hacker will come up with “Super Vulva 2007″ on his own. 

In these technological times, we have so many passwords, phone numbers, and PINs to remember, that we need to make it as easy on ourselves as possible.  I have one password for everything, and it is a nonsensical word that my sister made up when we were little; there’s no risk of it being discovered. 

If  I had my way, my doctor’s office would have handed out little slips of paper with passwords like the following:

• His Royal Imperial Squiggledy Gidget
• Poopoopeepeewawaweewee
• Ted Koppel Is A Heinous Cretin
• Badonkadonk Butt
• Frugality Equals Banality
• Shriners Never Get Flu Shots
• When Will Barbara Walters Ever Retire?
• Pork Loin Doesn’t Belong In Your Ear Canal

 If you ascribe to my philosophy, you’ll adopt a password like one of these for your own.  Be aware that if you’re in a jam, you might have to give your password to your IT person.  So don’t reveal any secrets about yourself (FourEyesNoChin). 

have a rich husband

and too much time on your hands?

then write a cookbook*

* substitute childrens book; exercise book;

decorating book; sex book

If she endorsed it

Mein Kampf would need reprinting

of her I’m weary

Butters:  Mom look what I drew.

Me:  Oh I see. What is between its legs?

Butters:  It’s a penis.

Me:  Show it to your Dad.

Butters:  Dad look what I drew.

Elliott: What’s that between its legs?

Butters:  It’s a penis.

Elliott:  Why does it look like a snowman?

Me:  Just be glad it’s not a graphic depiction.   Snowman is just fine.

just yesterday

a lifetime away i’d age

that lifetime is now

med records were leaked

not a hamster in his butt

just some broken bones