Frosticles of Merit

Phlim here, back from a much needed LONG siesta, or as in Spanish they say, a largo nap!  I just had to write about this story, as the scoutly arts are near and dear to my heart.  

It seems that a young man has earned all of the 121 merit badges needed to ascend to high master of universe scout.  Here is a weblink:  

http://www.usatoday.com/news/offbeat/2008-12-29-merit-badges_N.htm?csp=34

Everyone knows that the boy scouts is an honorable competition which takes the childhood mind off of video games and girls, and puts them squarely on gentlemanly pursuits like oaken staffs and garter/sock placement (see above).  

There is, however, a dark side to this regimented organization.  A friend of mine, let's call him for anonymity's sake, Andrew Harold, Esq., was in fact an boy scout for a time.  The man is now one of the more depraved lunatics in my coterie of social accquaintances.  He'll routinely chase old ladies across streets to save them from themselves, and cannot be given a length of string without tying it into a double overhand stopper knot (his favorite), while I tell him always that the fieggen shoelace knot is much more classy.  To each his own.  

In conclusion, the young man who has forsaken popularity, social life, and general fun of all kinds in order to achieve a sash of stitched fabric will surely go places in the business/political fields that he is interested in.  Everyone here at the Dippler blog wishes him the best.  

balloon pic!

Tom and Oprah are Such Good Friends.

Guest Post:  Sandria Dippler (Phlim's biological step-writer)

My good friend Joba (from our Danish sister-blog (or SOUER-blog for your Frenchman)))) and I went to a balloon festival this weekend.  We're total ballooniacs!  I swear!  No I swear!  We're such kooks.  Oh well, it would appear that over the years ballooning has really grown from a lot.  Apparently the first goose-skin models were banned for heresy because the balloons were suspected to be able to carry humans illegally into heaven.  These crazy christians!  Pu-LEASE, I am a secular though.  Joba and I are very spiritual both of us.  We believe in only holistics and healing with totally natural stuff!  Joba has this funny joke where he's saying "holistic is a HOL lot of fun"  and I'm like lol.  We had a great time at Balloons 2008 though, it was a balloon festival to remember.  But aren't they all!!!  Really some nice cross stitch patterns, and I was drawn to Joba's passion concerning the nylon vs. neoprene debate.  Inspiration I say.  More like balloonspiration.  BMAGGGG.  Thanks phlim for your generosity in this guest blog.  

"you must've had an interesting childhood HEHEHEHEH"

"hopefully bellevue will come through HEHEHEHE" 

"but you make it so easy Apu... or so Homer Simpson would say"  

best of yahoo questions

I will now start featuring a featurette I'd like to call "best of yahoo questions" from the yahoo answers program.  I spend a good deal of time on this, and wonder why people are indeed wasting their time.  

1. "Ain't it good now people have Chocolate wedding cakes instead of orrible old currents and that ?"

Yes. 

2. "Do Cats Know Karate?" 

Yes.

3. Is it easy to get a medical marijuana?

Just one? Yes. 

4.HELP!!! My "male" bird just laid an egg!?

AWESOMe!! 

5. Do you think I'm an emo?

Oh dear lord yes.  

the clear choice for change

How could someone show up at the polls and not desire this outcome?  

jabba

Coworkers these days are becoming more bothersome, especially when they look like Jabba the Hut and their ideas of humor consist of vaguely alluding only to others doing drugs.  I'll give an example.  Coworker A says a joke.  Coworker B agrees with funniness of said joke.  Jabba then displays ignorance by making an allusion to A and B being on drugs.  In script form, it looks like this.

A: you know, like, 'scuse me, while I kiss this guy

B: oh yeah, hahahaha

Rotundity of Jabba:  whatever yous guys are takin'.... better stop while you're ahead!  

I can also use this as an appropriate forum to share the personal details that I learn about people's lives.  The following is an excerpt from a coworker's phone conversation.

"no, you leave me alone now.  You've completely ruined my life.  I'm broke because of you.  You know that speech you gave about forgiveness and love?  Well that was the most hypocritical thing I've ever experienced.  What?  No.  Shutup, leave me alone. forever."  ::slams fist on desk::

These little outbursts provide me with wonderful entertainment ranging from "holy shit I work with these people" to "at least I don't work somewhere boring, or maybe this is terribly boring and I'm just turning it into entertainment".  I guess it all depends on how much you prize lameness as a virtue.  

Where Mules Are Your Only Concern

You may think that food packaging has gotten increasingly baffling lately.  You will see the words "natural flavor" and "artificial flavor" bandied about.  A special note halting this paragraph would be that I don't know where "bandied about" comes from, but I know how to use it and i like how it sounds.  You may say "How is it artificial flavor if it indeed exists and is made from ingredients found on Earth?"  You would go on to point out that things found on Earth equal natural things, whereas artificial things are made up from nothing.  Well you'd be partially right, you idiot.  Artificial flavors are the ones that warn you prior to your eating them.  Take a typical package of snickers, containing natural and artificial flavors. The natural ones, you will taste.  The artificial ones, you will observe on the long strip of paper enclosing the bar, which reads "chocolate, nougat, nuts".  Special Note:  This long strip is NOT the packaging.  Do NOT eat the packaging.  You are meant to eat the strip which indicates the flavor you are to imagine from its indications, whereas eating a foil wrapper would be idiotic.  The enjoyment is a cerebral one, but not at all inauthentic.  Therefore, we come back to the question of whether it is artificial at all.  

Interesting station call letters and notes

The selection of radio station or television call letter is evidently a grueling process.  One would like to stay within fcc limitations, while also making a funny little joke.  Most cities fail at this task.  LA and New York own the eponymous call letters (i.e. knbc, wabc, kcbs and such) while other cities are forced to come up with new and crazy letters.  I cannot guess why Seattle has chosen to name two separate stations KING-TV and KONG-TV.  Also, somewhere in the US there is a CHUM-fm.  In case you are wondering, if I had my choice I'd work for KRON-TV.  I'd also love some day to move up the chain and work in the call letter assignment laboratories where they are created with sprawlings books full of letters of the English language- some lost and long forgotten, some rarely used for fear of bewitchment.  Now that you know more about the media, we can get into whether or not it is the message, or not.  

A Note On Modern Schooling

Contemporary education is now considered a worthy sport for the up and coming postmodernist gentleman or lass.  However, modern tutelage is borne from its roots before learning was prized, and was only considered the foppish province of the hair-encurled dandy.  In this era, the garden variety child was set to the honorable duty of millinery work or grub collecting (for fish mongers' children only).  Schooling was considered a fashion statement, an outward comment on the amount of time being spent not toiling in the underground salt mines.  Due to the rise of industrial machinery, and thus increasingly more robo-centric literary work, the attitude about knowledge-trolling (as learning was called) abruptly changed.  Concerned adults propagated the idea that the youth would now be required to spend their days learning the weaknesses of our impending mechnical overlords.  The decision was reached in 1907 that in all likelihood, a robot's main liability would be its inability to barter with humans over the price of a can of oil.  This also caused the highly-controversial 1908 decision by the Securities and Exchange commission to outlaw robots from participating in commodities trading at the New York Stock Exchange.  It also fostered a renewed vigor in the human ideal of the free market, the final straw for any hope of mechanical revolution.  To this day, children learn at an ever faster pace, at most schools consuming required hourly coffee beverages to keep up with the pace of technology, always wary of the spectre of revolution.  Next time, we'll cover more cultural matters.  

Let's talk Camels.

Ok everyone, my first blog post didn't garner quite the media upheaval I had hoped.  While my instinct is to make this blog far more scurrilous and racy, I have decided not to leverage my integrity and will stay true to you, my loyal readers.  However, this blog will now contain more pictures of A) stone babies and B) kitties.

See?  Now that's something everyone can enjoy.  So, here's the deal.  Our nation is at a crossroads.  Looking to the right, we see the 18 wheel behemoth that has made a "wide right turn" (it warned us) and has hit a baby carriage.  On t'other, we have a stalled stagecoach wagon, and I say stalled because the horse pulling it has broken a shoe and has run over a nail of some sort (very painful for horses- if you don't understand, don't worry, I'll explain more about horse-drawn vehicles later).  Also, America is low on gas, and it's rather hot outside, so we don't want to turn off the air conditioning, but also, we know that an abrupt acceleration would burn nearly half the petrol we have left, so we're at kind of a crossroads within a crossroads.  The first crossroads is metaphorical, the second is literal, and contains the aforementioned obstacles.  Many would say to abandon the vehicle and run to Canada, but that's a very far run, and once we get there we would feel lame, both in ambulatory function and spirit.  Also, there is the choice to gun the engine, pedal to the floor, and see how much these fumes will carry us onward, towards destiny.  Others would say "my word, someone help that poor unattended baby", but those people are fags.  My suggestion, loyal readers, is to play it cool.  Commit any of the above actions, and one might be labelled some sort of action-taker, which is something I heartily advise against.  Next up, we shall focus on government spending.  

I now have a blog, all gather for knowledge

There is now one place for all of the world to come and be amused, englightened, and sometimes miffed.  Miffed sounds like it could be used as a sports term.  The preceding sentence is just one of the many examples of musings that you will in the future find both fun and informative.  So welcome, world, to the last blog, vlog, phlog, or milfog you'll ever read/see/devour.  Up next:  My problems with fungi.