Nature Encroaches
I live in the city of St. Paul, Minnesota. (Cartographers, put your maps away.) I’m not in the downtown area, but I’m also not exactly in a rural area. Even so, we get a fair amount of wildlife creeping around. Oh, sure, there are the squirrels, rabbits, and assorted birds, but every now and again something more “exotic” makes its presence known.
There have been deer in the neighbors’ yards, turkeys by my office. Why we even had a nesting pair of Merlins in a tree across the street. Merlins aren’t very common in this area.
I retold the tale of a close encounter I had with a raccoon. It had been a few years since the visit, so my memory may not have been entirely accurate. It happened during a lunar eclipse and while the Cubs were playing the Pirates.
I brought up the whole wildlife encroachment thing, because another unusual animal made its presence known some weeks ago. It was a Great Horned Howl. I didn’t see it, but I heard its call. The damn thing actually goes, “Who-who whoooo.”
What’s next? Coyotes? Wolves? Great White Sharks?
Toot
A little mystery has arisen at the comic book store for which I work. Nostalgia Zone in Minneapolis has loads and loads of old comic books. (Check out our website!) We are always buying old comics from folks and, we’re not sure when, we bought a collection that had a curiosity. Someone had written “Toot” on the covers of the books.
We didn’t notice them at the time, but the Toots soon became apparent. We don’t know what it means. Is it a nickname? Was someone making a cryptic comment? Is it code?
It’s a mystery. I blogged about it for Nostalgia Zone’s official blog: Warehouse Find.
A Dimland Radio Pedantic Moment: A Twofer About Tailgating And Brakes
Allstate Insurance has been running a series of auto insurance ads featuring a character name Mayhem for a few years now. In one of the more recent ads, Mayhem is tailgating another driver, the driver isn’t paying enough attention to the car in front of them because of the tailgater behind them. And, soon enough, crash! The driver runs into the car in front. And Mayhem drives away unscathed.
Here’s the problem: There is no way Mayhem could have avoided banging into the car he was tailgating and get away undamaged. He was way too close. Even if he had smart brakes in his car. (During the show, I underestimated how close Mayhem was tailgating. I thought it was about a foot. Nope! More like three inches! Even more impossible to drive away from untouched.)
And, speaking of smart brakes, Subaru is running an ad touting that technology in their cars. In their ad they show a family out for a drive. Dad, who is driving, is spending too much time looking at his family and not enough at the road, when the cars in front of him suddenly stop. He sees, but it’s too late to stop. He takes a last look at his family as his life flashes before his eyes. Fortunately, the car has those smart brakes and stopped itself in time. Phew!
But, when in a sudden stop situation, no one takes the time to look around. They lock eyes on whatever it is that has forced them to do a quick stop.
And is the daughter eating a cup full of coffee beans?
Hang on. America Is Great Now?
Our glorious president, who is looking more and more as though he will be re-elected, has unveiled a new slogan to replace Make America Great Again. It is now:
Keep America Great
Apparently, America became great sometime in the last three years.
It doesn’t look like the 1950s again to me.
Remember When MTV Played Music Videos?
Remember when The History Channel had shows about history?
Remember when The Learning Channel had shows that weren’t learning us bullshit?
Remember when The Science Channel did science?
Oh, those were the days.
I complained about a new mystery-mongering show on The Science Channel. It’s called Curse of the Bermuda Triangle. The show follows four Duck Dynasty-like “explorers” as they don’t solve the mystery of the Bermuda Triangle.
There’s no mystery really. The area gets lots of traffic. Ships sink, planes crash, divers drown. There’s nothing particularly special about the area, other than it is conveniently expanded when mystery-mongers want to include other weird happenings or disappearances that don’t quite fall into the area of the Devil’s Triangle.
The first episode is of the disappearance of Flight 19, a military training flight. They went off course, ran out of fuel, and ditched in the water. Wow! What a mystery?! I sure hope the fellows can get to the bottom of it.
And I have a friend who is involved. I talked a bit about this friend. Sigh.
Music heard on the show…
Dimland Radio opening theme song: Ram by The Yoleus
First ad break bumpers: Love Is For Lovers by The dB’s and Love Is Stronger Than Pride by Sade
Second ad break bumpers: Love At First Sight by XTC and Love Is The Law by The Suburbs
Closing song: Angler’s Treble Hook by $5 Fiddle
That’s it! See you next Saturday night for Dimland Radio 11 Central, midnight Eastern on www.ztalkradio.com you can also download my show from the z talk show archives page. You can email your questions and comments to drdim@dimland.com
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