Interrupting the scheduled frivolity for a bit of a rant, but I assure you the fun will start soon. Please bear with me. 🙂
Before getting to the serious matter at hand, I do have to acknowledge that my poor father is probably shaking his finger at me from Heaven for using the word “stupid” in reference to anyone. When I was a kid, he would get most upset if he ever heard one of us kids calling out, “You’re stupid.” We were never sure why he found that so offensive, and he never told us, but over the years I learned not to use the word aloud, or in print.
Lately, it’s gotten harder and harder to keep the lid on it, with all the stupidity that’s running rampant in Washington. Or as Forrest Gump so famously, and wisely, said, “Stupid is as stupid does.”
Skipping past the most obvious havoc from tRump & his co-president, it appears that members of the Cabinet left whatever gray matter they have outside the doors of the White House when they stepped inside and accepted the nomination to those important positions. Case in point is this little gem that was in the news recently:
Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins announced this week that the Department of Agriculture was extending waivers to poultry and pork processing plants to allow them to increase the production line speed. Safety measures that included a reduction of that speed had been put in place because of workplace injuries caused by the faster production, but Rollins refers to those measures as burdons on the industries that added “unnecessary costs for American producers.”
Oh yeah. Throw the worker under the bus, or in this case into the slicer, for the sake of corporate profit.
Okay. End of rant. Enjoy this cute cartoon by Scott Johnston before moving on to a fun post from our friend Slim Randles.
Now we know the truth about how the tortoise won the race!
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Oh dear. Where would we be without the incomparable medical advice of Windy Wilson?
I timed ‘er just right t’other day. Strolled on into the Mule Barn when I knew Doc and the guys would be there. Oh we unfiltered the world events for a while, then … to take advantage of medical science when it’s sippin’ coffee, I rolls up my sleeve and shows Doc my elbow.
Then I said, “Doc, what do you reckermend for a elbow with a carbolic uncle on it like this here?”
And ol’ Doc, he looks right at me, takes a sip o’joe, and says, “Youth in Asia.”
Youth in Asia? Hey, you know me, Alphonse Wilson. You know I ain’t got a thing against them Chinese kids. I sure like to watch ‘em in the Olympics. You see them Chinese girls divin’? Boy howdy! And them Korean guys shooting their bows? Flamtastic!
And I’m sure they’re all really nice folks ‘n all, but what do the kids know about elbows?
So I went to the library and asked Mrs. Cutter if she had anythin’ on fixin’ elbows in China or Japan or Korea or Cambloodia, or any a them Asian countries. She looked at me kinda funny there for a minute, I guess she wasn’t ‘spectin’ me to be lookin’ up medicine thingies. But then she brought me back a book on Asian medicine and I checked ‘er out.
Wellsir, you ain’t gonna believe this, but I even saw piktchers. You know what them guys do when they got a misery in a certain place? They stick pins in it!
See, told you you wouldn’t believe me. But they do. They call it accurate puncture.
And if stickin’ a pin ain’t getting’ the job done, why they ups ‘n puts a marshmeller on the top of the pin and sets fire to it!
Hey, if I’m lyin’ may my dog get coated in WD40 and come down with the lubricrated scours!
Yessir.
Well, I thought this was about the dumbest thing I ever read, but I know ol’ Doc wouldn’t steer me wrong … so I did ‘er.
I got me a marshmeller … yes, I did. Had some left over from Halloween, you know, last year. And I put one on that pin and ignitified it. Singed all the hair around my elbow, too.
It hurt a little, but it was about like gettin’ a blackleg shot at branding, ‘cept on purpose a-course. But I sat there lookin’ at my elbow through all of Gunsmoke and that there carbolic uncle didn’t go away.
Did it work? Well, no. Not really. Maybe you have to have a Asian elbow to get all the benerfits of it.
But that there marshmeller shore tasted good.
And you can tell ‘em I said so.
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A book of Windy’s-best called “Wit and Wisdom of Windy Wilson” should be published before the year’s out. You know you’ll need one.
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Check out all of Slim’s award-winning books at his Goodreads Page and in better bookstores and bunkhouses throughout the free world.
All of the posts here are from his syndicated column, Home Country that is read in hundreds of newspapers across the country. I am always happy to have him share his wit and wisdom here.
Slim Randles is a veteran newspaperman, hunting guide, cowboy and dog musher. He was a feature writer and columnist for The Anchorage Daily News for 10 years and guided hunters in the Alaska Range and the Talkeetna Mountains. A resident of New Mexico now for more than 30 years, Randles is the prize-winning author of a dozen books, and is host of two podcasts and a television program.
