Air Transport

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Do you know what security x-ray technicians at airports can’t see?

Inflated balloons in luggage.

I’m going to hide something in one next time.

… they probably won’t be able to see that either!

I could be wrong; I usually am.

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note: I brought this balloon back from Canada in my backpack.

         security x-ray technician: Why are you carrying an empty backpack?

        me: hee hee!

double note: why this balloon? … my sister thought it was a planetross
thing … and saved it for me for 4 years.
My family knows me too well.

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Things I’ve Seen With My Own Two Eyes #2:
reading glasses approaching.

Breathing Through Life

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“Sometimes all I need is the air that I breathe”,

but sometimes “all I need is the air that you breathe”

… especially if I’m unconscious and poolside.

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note: I use other people’s air when filling up flat tires and buying balloons … but mostly I’m self-sufficient.

double note: inflation is the cornerstone of the balloon market!

triple note: to air is human.

quadruple note: if I have no air, does all my money just go to the Government?

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what I’m listening to now #2: The Talking Heads

Planes And Boats And Trains

 

 

Singers sing about cars, trucks, vans, motorcycles, boats, rockets, planes, helicopters, trains, buses, subways, balloons, bicycles, unicycles, skateboards, rollerskates, horses, and even Segways (Weird Al Yankovic)

… but no one ever sings about stilts.

Songwriters can’t be blamed for this oversight really:

the best rhyme that goes with “stilts” is “kilts”

… and stilts and kilts don’t really work too well together in my experience.

 

 

note: photo taken by Kelly Pettit … while we were being shopping mauled the other day.

double note: when I saw this photo it made me realize why I usually drive on the inside of my van.

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Today #95

I’m washing my stinky slippers today.
The ones I don’t wear at all never stink!
It’s a mystery!

 

Every Friday Evening

 

Every Friday evening a 2 year old boy comes with his mother for a 30 minute English class.

Every Friday evening I blow up a balloon and put it somewhere in the room.

Every Friday evening when he comes in to the room we look for the balloon.

When he finds it I ask him what color it is and then we have the big conversation:

“Here you are.”
“Thank you.”     … as we pass it back and forth.

After that we move on to more extreme stuff like:

– looking for animals in the jungle
– making imaginary cakes with imaginary ingredients 
– examining the contents of magical bags holding treasures like plastic fruit, 2 piece animal puzzles, or things that need to be classified as a certain color

In between these important activities we sings songs:

– about his health (How are you?)
– environmental issues (How’s the weather?)
– public transportation (The Wheels on the Bus),
– monkeys jumping on beds, spiders climbing drainpipes, ducks hiking, …

It’s a quick 30 minutes and I actually look forward to it for some weird reason.

I know his name, but I don’t think he knows mine.

I’m just the balloon man.

 

note: another little kid calls me “Wednesday” because that’s when he has a class.

double note: little kids really need to have a life.

triple note: most kids like me because I’m bigger and very different looking than their parents … like a dinosaur … or something. I can live with that.

quadruple note: most kids like me are probably the same age as me … or older or younger. I know where you live.

quintuple note: finding two meanings in everything is really annoying sometimes.

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notes to myself #128

You end up where you belong … you don’t really fit in, but you still belong somehow.

Theo’s Thoughts

 

 This is the story of Theo when he was eight and not so rottenish yet.

Theo thought he needed a hobby; actually, his parents insisted he do something other than skulk around claiming he was bored all the time.

All his friends had hobbies: sports cards, stamps, coins, trainspotting, advanced robotics, …

One of his friends even collected teeth; but his father was a dentist, so that was only mildly disturbing.

Theo decided to collect his thoughts.

He would put them in jars, label them, and keep them in a bookcase that was really doing nothing except holding a bunch of  books.

He thought about all the thoughts he thought in one day …or at least thought about all the thoughts he thought he thought about in one day … and realized he had too many thoughts to collect all of them.
 He only had 35 jars, so he decided “happy thoughts” might be a good start.

Over the next few weeks he collected and organized all his “happy thoughts” about finding money, ice cream, toys, running through sprinklers, …

In no time at all, all his jars were full!
Surprisingly, 3 jars were exclusively filled with “happy thoughts” about ice cream!

It was a very fine collection of thoughts.

He soon realized that since all his “happy thoughts” were bottled up, labelled, and stacked away; he had a very large number of “sad thoughts” floating around in his head.
With no “happy thoughts” to chase the “sad thoughts” away, they just lingered.

This made him sadder.

Theo decided it would be a good idea to free all his “happy thoughts” and start collecting his “sad thoughts” instead.

He refilled his jars with “sad thoughts” about broken bones, no dessert, vaccination needles, dropped ice cream cones, dentist visits …

 

It took him a whole month to fill up all 35 jars. 

He concluded that “sad thoughts” were more difficult to trap  than “happy thoughts” because they didn’t like jars.

With no more “sad thoughts” in his head, Theo thought he’d be really happy: but he wasn’t.

Without any “sad thoughts” to balance his “happy thoughts“, his “happy thoughts” weren’t as strong or happy anymore …  kind of like appreciating being healthy a lot more after being sick … or how a cold Winter makes Spring’s arrival so much better. He needed both sadly, or happily.

Theo decided to release his “sad thoughts” and resolved  never to collect his thoughts ever again.

He used the 35 jars to catch colds instead.

 

note: The jar of asparaguses on the floor is not a “sad thought“: Theo just dropped it accidentally on purpose while walking by the bookcase on the way to the dinner table. He had a “happy thought” right after he did this for some reason.

 

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Good Deeds

Sometimes I perform random acts of kindness … or as I say … “random kinds of actness” which sounds like a type of acne or something, but I say it anyway.

Yesterday while walking through a crowded shopping center I spotted a rogue balloon sticking to the ceiling with a father longingly looking up at it  and a son sadly looking at the limp string in his hand.

I stopped, jumped up, retrieved the balloon for them, and walked away.

This seemed to make them quite happy.

I guess I should have popped the balloon so it wouldn’t happen again.

 

note: Why is it called “blowing up a balloon” when it doesn’t pop?

double note: photo of the amazing curved escalator in Landmark Tower Yokohama. I’ve blogged about this amazing escalator  before.

 

 

 

http://humor-blogs.com/

The Blue Monkey #2

The Blue Monkey predicts:

In our lifetime a balloon cake will be invented for birthday celebrations. It will be called a ballake or a calloon.

Cutting this hybrid balloon/cake will prove difficult.

 

note:
The blue monkey is a lesser oracle who predicts what may happen, not what will happen. He has studied many different disciplines on his path to enlightenment, including: using ouija boards, reading horoscopes, counting cherry pits, blowing out birthday candles, opening fortune cookies, pulling wishbones, watching Kung Fu reruns, listening to the weatherman, twisting apple stems, and shaking the Magic 8 Ball. All behold the blue monkey!

http://humor-blogs.com/