“WE PEEL FOR FREE”
(For the record, I took this picture while stopped at a light.)
In Texas we have all kinds of mobile shopping centers. Although, sometimes the vehicles aren’t mobile as they seem to sit in the same place for days, months, even years. On a Saturday at these mobile shopping centers you can pick up that Dixie flag with Hank Williams, Jr in the middle of the stars and bars, or a quilt with two wolves howling. Maybe you need a bed? At one of these mobile shopping centers you can get a hand carved bed frame, and other wooden furniture. I’ve even seen mini motorcycles for sale, baby furniture. You name it. However a requirement for the mobile shopping center is a truck selling shrimp. Now friends where I live is a good hour and a half from the Gulf of Mexico. The temperature has hit over 100 for a week straight. And that’s not the feels like temperature. If it feels like 107 to me, I’m sure it feels like 107 to the shrimp in these trucks. Oh sure, they ice them down, I’m assuming as I’ve never actually bought shrimp or food for that matter from a truck on the side of the road. Unless you count ice cream as a kid from the ice cream truck, or a corn dog and lemonade from those stands that used to set up in front of WEvil-Mart. That was back in olden times before they had snack bars inside of the stores, now instead of snack bars. They have Mickey D’s.
Anyway, back to the shrimp truck. I do like shrimp. It’s not something I can’t live without, but I do enjoy it every once in a while. Hopefully those restaurants are not buying their supply from a roadside truck like this. I guess I’m still here; maybe I have a parasite inside of me caused from shrimp from a roadside truck. That’s will be my answer the next time a little kid asks why I am so big. “I have a parasite alive inside of me presumably from a shrimp purchased from a roadside shrimp truck. It keeps getting bigger and will probably burst through my chest at any moment. So you might want to stand back.”
Sorry for that visual!
People in big trucks
Just an observation, I’ve noticed that half the people who drive big jacked up trucks try to impress everyone with their curb hopping skills with in their $40K trucks. Congratulations buddy! I almost could not do that in my Malibu if I didn’t have time to wait at the stop light. Congratulations on those thirty seconds you saved! On the other hand, the other half of people driving big trucks drive like they’re in one of those two door smart cars. This morning, I witnessed a big Toyota Tundra come to a complete stop so to miss a bath rug that was sitting in the road. True if you were travelling on the freeway at 70 plus mph, you wouldn’t know what it was until you came right up on it. This was on a 30 mph road, and the truck wasn’t even topping the speed limit. I wear glasses and could tell it was a bath rug from fifty feet away. Fortunately I was not in the same lane as the truck so I didn’t have to come to a complete stop with them.
Speaking of those smart cars, why do those people tailgate? Do they think it’s intimidating? A friend of mine summed the smart car up best as a “motor with a roll bar”.
Michael Jackson
I previously wrote about how Michael Jackson’s passing did not make me sad, mainly because I didn’t know him. Once again, to clarify I am not happy he died. I just didn’t have a personal connection with him. I am sad for his kids and the people who knew him. However, despite the weirdness surrounding him, I heard “Thriller” the other day and it reminded me of being in first or second grade in Pittsburg, KS. The song gives me some of those retroactive memories. I had a birthday party at Showbiz Pizza in Joplin, MO. Joplin is about a thirty minute drive from Pittsburg if memory serves me correct. For my birthday a kid from school gave me a poster of Michael Jackson, it was the same picture from the Thriller album cover. My Dad wouldn’t let me put the poster up, because Michael Jackson was “worldly”. So the poster stayed rolled up under my bed. There you have it, that’s my Michael Jackson memory.
Pop Machine
I was sitting in the waiting area at a tire shop Monday evening and noticed a small display that would flash different verbiage. It was in this order, “$1.25”, “Cold Drinks”, “47f”, $1.25” , “Cold Drinks”, “48f”, “$1.25”, “Cold Drinks”, “47f”, $1.25” , “Cold Drinks”, “48f”.
In case you missed it, it was switching between 47f and 48f every other time. Leading me to believe that the display has no connection to the refrigeration of the machine, I think an investigative report is needed. Hey, there was nothing to do in the waiting area.
Second String
I was curious why second string is called second string. According to the never wrong Wikipedia (Sinbad is dead you know?), second string refers to archers in medieval times. A second string was just that, a second string for the bow.
Actually Merriam-Webster did confirm this:
Etymology: from the reserve bowstring carried by an archer in case the first breaks
Favorite quote at the moment:
“And were an epitaph to be my story I’d have a short one ready for my own. I would have written of me on my stone: I had a lover’s quarrel with the world.” -Robert Frost
Favorite dumb quote at the moment:
“He needs to get up off his high horse.” -Wes, a tool on “The Bachelorette”
Favorite lyric at the moment:
“Nobody knows you when you’re down and out” -Eric Clapton
