The Dartnel
January 30, 2006
Welcome
to a special, all-rants edition of The
Dartnel!
First,
something I’ve been meaning to dwell on for a few weeks now. The Fox affiliate in
Today’s
uplifting thought from the Dartman: Watch
out for that tree! (I really need help here.)
I’ve
come to the conclusion that I will never be able to play golf even
horribly. Quite frankly, there are six
month old infants who could give me nine shots a side and still beat me by 23
strokes. I played a round last
Wednesday. Suffice to say, my earlier
optimism about my golf game is long gone.
Every one of my old habits has returned, much worse than before. I can’t get the ball airborne. Even when I do, it goes farther right than it
does straight. Even when I chip, I’m as
likely to miss the golf ball as I am to hit it.
I wouldn’t have broken 200 had I not putted well and had I not taken
about 20 mulligans.
On This Date: On this day in 1835, gunshots rang out in the
House of Representatives. President
Andrew Jackson was the target of an assassination attempt. The man who attempted to assassinate him, Richard
Lawrence, was later found to be insane and committed to a mental hospital. I’ll say this about our government today: at
least we don’t have people shooting guns in Congress.
One
last rant. Have I ever mentioned that I
hate broccoli? It’s so green and
nauseating. It tastes weird. To top it off, it’s supposed to be good for
you. I have a strict rule regarding my
diet: If it’s green and tastes weird, it’s
probably gone bad, so don’t eat it!
(Hey, that could have been
this week’s uplifting thought!)
Speaking
of things that cause ranting, it’s the…
Word of the Week: sangfroid –
n. meaning freedom from agitation or
excitement of mind; coolness in trying circumstances; calmness (pronounced sang-FRWAH;
also spelled “sang-froid”)
I’m all ranted out!
Darrell
January 24, 2006
Good
day!
Ladies
and gentlemen, I want to warn you about something. Buying discounted books can be a great way to
save money, as long as the books are
actually discounted. While at a store
whose name I will not reveal (in case I wind up working there), I looked at
their so-called bargain books. There
were bibles there, priced at $10.99 or so.
Unfortunately, they were still in the shrink wrap from another store;
and at that store, you could buy the same bible for $5! The $5 sticker was still on this $10.99
bible! What message does that send? “This book will change your life for the
better, so we’re charging you more than double the original sticker price! We know
that it says “Do not steal” in there, but we don’t care!” In related information, if you’re planning to
get a bible, I recommend getting one with large type (the cheap bibles usually
feature type that’s too small to read with a magnifying lens) and that isn’t the hard-to-read King James
Version. I feel that the KJV probably
causes more people to give up on reading the bible than anything else. It’s written in arcane old English – mid
1600s, I believe. Get a New King James
Version, a New International Version, something easier to understand.
Today’s
uplifting thought from the Dartman: When
confronted with danger, remember this simple tip: jfriuf kjfhreuf mdsudwhfw nfjfherfndsfmof
kdfjgorejg,df giojdfkjwef; kijfejfo! (I
can’t put it any simpler than that!)
Anybody
out there who actually thinks I know what I’m talking about should take two
aspirin immediately. As for the rest of
you, I offer this anecdote. Driving
scares me. I am convinced that 99.5% of
drivers give the rest a bad name. Do we
really not know how to drive? So many people seem to have problems with
staying on the correct side of the road.
I almost got run off the road today by someone who was on the center
line. (Okay, the road didn’t have a center line, but I digress.) We follow too closely, fail to use our
blinkers (until we’re actually in the process of making the turn), yap away on our cell phones while driving, speed,
pass in no-passing zones, run stop signs (once again, the care must come to a complete stop at a stop sign; your car
should not be moving before you drive
on), honk when somebody slows down to make a turn, pass on the shoulder of the
road, etc. and so on. Those of us who
don’t do these things (i.e., me) tend
to drive scared, fail to turn when we have plenty of room, slow to a virtual
crawl before we turn, etc. and so on.
Let’s face it; cars are not safe!
Speaking
of safety hazards, it’s time once again for the…
Word of the Week: quondam
– adj. meaning having been formerly;
former; sometime (pronounced KWAHN-duhm or KWAHN-dam)
From a quondam member of the PHS Academic Bowl team,
cogito ergo sum.
Darrell
January 14, 2006
For
those of you who are new to this site, no, I am not a resident of the Fritos
Funny Farm! (Ah-oh… I’m going to get
sued…)
I
went on another job interview last Monday.
In keeping with my insipid traditions, you’re not getting any more
information than that! All I can do is
keep looking for work. Good things come
to those who wait, I guess. Let me tell
you, all I’ve got is my patience! That,
and an increasingly bizarre alter ego who I can’t tell to shut up often
enough! (Yes, I mean you,
Stan!)
I’m
seriously working on my so-called golf game.
I can actually get the ball airborne now! My swing is just fine for the six-iron down
to the wedges. The longer clubs are
still a huge problem. With them, even if
I make contact, I lose the ball 100 yards to the right. With the shorter clubs, I tend to hit a
slight draw (meaning that the ball goes five yards to the left). It’s still
good exercise; I think I’ve put on five pounds of muscle since I started hitting golf balls practically every day!
Today’s
uplifting thought from the Dartman:
People who live in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones, unless their
insurance policy covers that sort of thing.
Speaking of which, what kind of moron would sell an insurance policy guarding against shattered windows
from flying objects inside to someone who lives in a glass house? (SHUT
UP, STAN!!!)
Once
again, it’s time for the brilliant idea of our crack editorial staff, On This Date. Incidentally, since the prior source has
apparently gone belly-up, I’m now pulling the material for this from the
History Channel’s Web site.
On
this date in 1980, the price of gold reached a record price in excess of $800
an ounce. Gold had been released from
U.S. Government control after the
Now
for one of my (less-than-) brilliant ideas, the…
Word of the Week: sesquipedalian
– adj. meaning 1. Given to or
characterized by the use of long words; 2. Long and ponderous; having many syllables
(pronounced ses-kwuh-puh-DAYL-yuhn)
The best example of this I can think of is that word
from Mary Poppins which I never did
learn how to spell properly.
Remind me next time not to be so garrulous.
Darrell
January 6 2006
Should
I say it? All right… HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!
Things
are going slowly around here. I don’t
have much that’s new to report. Of
course, that probably still doesn’t save you from thirty minutes of reading my
rambling insights on the world!
There
can be some extreme truths in commercials.
A few weeks back, I saw one that said that the number one fear of most
people is public speaking. The number
two fear? Death. The commercial then goes on to ask (and this
isn’t in quotes because I’m not sure of the actual wording), Does that mean
most people would rather die than speak in public? The commercial was for a fast food chain
that’s selling a giant chicken sandwich (probably 1,000 calories’ worth). The tag line:
Don’t be a big chicken; eat one!
Good idea; then we can be not only scared of public speaking and death,
we can also be morbidly obese. Of
course, I’ve never been described as
“morbidly obese.” I believe the term
used to describe me is “stick boy,” but I digress.
Today’s
uplifting thought from the Dartman: It’s
extremely important to brush your teeth.
How else are you going to eat that gigantic chicken sandwich? You can’t gum that sucker! (Hey, there’s
a new weight-loss fad! Have all your
teeth pulled! You can’t enjoy eating if
you can’t chew your food! Then again,
people who opt in to that diet would probably stick with milkshakes, malts, and
Big Gulp sodas, gain 378 pounds, and sue me for medical malpractice.) The point is, don’t lose your teeth. Stan accomplishes this by keeping them in a
glass jar, even though he still has all
of his teeth! I still don’t understand how he accomplishes that!
My
top five New Year’s Resolutions, in no particular order:
Actually,
one of my real New Year’s Resolutions
is to read the Bible through in a year.
Every book, every verse, every word,
cover to cover, in 365 days. (Actually,
it’ll be 366; the reading plan I have assumes that one is reading the Bible
during a leap year, so I started on December 31.) I’ve been reading portions of scripture every
day for the last couple of months, getting a good overview of the Bible. To be really honest, I don’t have a good
explanation as to why I haven’t been faithfully reading the Bible until
recently. We’ll just chalk it up to
spiritual laziness, of which I hope to never be afflicted with again.
What
better way to break in the New Year than with the…
Word of the Week: recondite
– adj. meaning 1. Difficult to
understand; abstruse; 2. Concerned with obscure subject matter (pronounced
REK-uhn-dyt)
Doesn’t that word perfectly describe the Dartnel?
Well, well, well.
With nothing to say, I still
managed to use up 710 words on this entry.
Can you imagine how long this
entry would have been if I actually had something to say?
Au revoir!
Darrell