HEY, Where's the DANCING can of SPAM?
...hey, folks, I'm just trying to stay out of trouble here!

For those of you who've visited this blog a lot, and you've scrolled down to where you could see the little dancing can of Spam near my profile (located waaay down on the left side of this page), you'll now find it is GONE. You see, I'm laying low. The last thing I need is for the folks at Hormel (makers of Spam) filling up my e-mail and blogsite with threats of lawsuits, implying that Spam has something to do with computers. They're upset about the whole thing, actually. (There is another post on this blog, in either the April, May or June '07 archives, that details the whole Spam thing; read that if you must. Although I've been known to repeat myself ad nauseum, I'm not going to do that here.) So, here, replacing my can of Dancing Spam, is good ol' Homer:



Ol' Homer here, tried his best to figure out the world, but that was a confusing task eons ago when he was alive, and he'd probably have a cranial meltdown if he were alive today. I have to look at it this way: Not that I know that much, because I don't, but if any of us could be teleported back in time, say, to the Renaissance, or the Dark Ages, or the Medieval age, or perhaps to George W. Bush's cabinet, I bet we could confound and flabbergast folks far and wide with everything we know. So, ol' Homer's gonna appear here for a while. He looks earnest, doesn't he? But confused. I think he's trying to figure out what the heck the purpose of this blog is. Speaking of which, I'm trying to figure that out too. Oh, don't worry, Spam-fans; I still have the dancing Spam can in my files. I may use it again someday...

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Well, with this next item, I'm only going to go back in time about four decades or thereabouts, before the advent of the cassette tape recorder, even. One year, I really desperately wanted a TAPE RECORDER for Christmas. And I got one! And you can see it in the old advertisement I've stolen off the 'net and posted below:



The recorder I had is the one that's pictured larger than all the other stuff in the ad. It was a Craig (registered trademark, at least then) Tape Recorder, and get this: It's the same model as the one that was always used in the old "Mission: Impossible" series. You know, the voice on the tape would say, "this tape will self-destruct in 5 seconds" and then the tape would fizz and melt and do all kinds of other mean, nasty and ugly things. The only size of reel that would fit on the little tape recorder was 3 INCHES in diameter. And the way you changed tape speed was to unscrew the little metal sleeve from the capstan (the revolving metal rod that comes in contact with the rubber pinch roller). "Sleeve On" meant your tape was playing/recording at 3 and 1/2 inches per second; "Sleeve Off" meant your tape was inching along at 1 and 7/8 I.P.S. Hey, it was "high tech" in the 1960's...

Well, as you know, everything is built to fall apart, and that's what happened to my little Craig tape-recorder. It featured what was known as the "T" control. "Fast Forward" and "Rewind" were at the upper ends of the "T", with "play" being at the bottom end of the "T". After I'd had it a couple of years, every time I put it in "play", a whole bunch of static would come out of the speaker, and then it would play EXTREMELY loud; something in there was evidently bypassing the volume control, or there was dirt in the switches or whatever. About five years ago, I saw one of those goofy little recorders at a Goodwill store, and I'm still kicking myself for not buying it. A chance to recapture memories, gone. I must be regressing. Or perhaps, fondly remembering. Or, "fondly regressing?" It's possible, I 'spose...
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WEEKEND TOMFOOLERY: This, as you can tell, is not a very serious post, not really. Joe Scarborough hosted the former Imus/MSNBC slot all last week, the war in Iraq continues, The President still hasn't exhibited any leadership skills, it's raining once again on the Oregon Coast, and gas is still over three bucks a gallon. Need I go on? I didn't think you wanted me to. So, instead, a goofy little photo thing, straight out of the Wild Kingdom:


"Uh-oh, he's at it again", the folks at www.spokesmanreview.com/blogs/hbo must be saying right about now...

Hey, it's the weekend. Gotta have some fun, right?
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Well, since my social skills are about as bad as the featured creature above, I've gotta do something! Now, the word is out...this is what I do late on a Saturday night...yep, I guess I always did live 'on the edge', ha ha haaaaa........