Went With The Wind! Puns

Back a few decades, I was working in a program with a local college in the Middle East.

The name of the program for ExPats has the clever acronym of "IDEA" (hey, I said it was clever); which stands for "Inter-Departmental Educational Adjunct". It's interdepartmental because my particular specialty not only covers field geology but also paleontology and a bit of archeology thrown in for good measure. Everyone hopes to have a good IDEA...

ahem...

Well, we saddle up and head for the Dune Sea out in the west of the country, where the Precambrian, Cambrian, Silurian, Cretaceous, Pliocene, Pleistocene, and Holocene crop out and access is relatively easy and non-injurious.

Well, we caravan out, some 30 Land Cruisers, Nissan patrol, and the odd Mitsubishi Galloper strong. We all get our maps, compasses and split up into 5 or 6 special interest groups ("SIG's"); where each IDEA has his own GPS and LIDAR laser ranging apparatus. Reason being, that there are very few benchmarks out in the desert, and even those are constantly at the mercy of the shifting and ever-blowing sands.

Since we're split into groups and at any one time, ranging up to and including some 50 km2, when a real find is located, a device called the "DIME" (Digital-Interface Monitor Encoder) is attached and programmed into the GPS for location later; it is a digital sort of low-frequency transponder, developed from technology used by offshore drillers and jacket setters where benchmarks are even more transitory.

The way it works is rather simple. When something is to be marked for later retrieval, a series of wooden posts are pounded in a triangular manner around the find and the DIME is set, programmed with the GPS and attached to one or more of the posts.

That's the theory, at least.

Everything works well, especially all the hardened electronics and computer gizmos, but attaching the DIME to the stakes is the real problem. It can't be nailed, screwed or fastened with any sort of metal contrivance as that farkles the magnetic field and causes all sorts of goofy spurious signals. Zip ties don't last long in the heat and duct tape is right out. Many sites have been lost to the shifting sands this way.

Velcro doesn't work too well, as the sand fills the hooks of the receiving piece of velcro and soon renders it useless. String or fishing line work, but that's temporary (they melt). Glue or mastic are out as these are supposed to be temporary. Even plastic sleeves don't work due to the heat out

Once upon a time there were three little pigs, Pork Chop, Hambone, and Bacon.

The boys lived at home with their mother. One day their mother said, “I no longer have enough food to feed you boys, you need to go out on your own and find your fortunes.”

Not wanting to upset their mother they left the house together to seek their fortunes.

Several miles into their journey Bacon, the little pig everyone liked best, said, “Let’s build our houses here! This seems like a great place to start making our fortunes.”

Pork Chop and Hambone agreed. So they all began building their houses.

Pork Chop, the laziest of the bunch, decided to build his house out of straw, which he apparently stole from a nearby field. It was not a very sturdy building material, but Pork Chop didn’t care. All he wanted to do was play all day, and he didn’t want to spend too much time building.

Hambone was willing to work a bit harder and he decided to build his house out of sticks which he procured by de-limbing every tree within a 300 meter radius of their homestead.

Hambone and Pork Chop were happy. Now all they had to do was to play and sleep the rest of the day.

Now Bacon was a hard worker. He knew that his brothers had used bad materials and shoddy construction methods and he wanted to build the best house he could. He found several tons of bricks stacked in neatly ordered pallets in the forest which he decided to use for his building material. It took him several days, but when he was done Bacon had the best house on the homestead.

The next day a wolf, Scott Howard, happened upon the pig brothers and their new homestead. He spied the straw house and smelled Pork Chop inside and began to think to himself that Pork Chop would make a mighty fine meal, so Scott went and knocked on the door.

Scott said, “Little Pig! Little Pig! Let me in!”

Pork Chop replied, “No way José! Not by the hairs on my chinny chin chin!”

Scott, undeterred by the reply says, “Then I’ll huff, and I’ll puff, and I’ll blow your crappy straw house to the ground!”

Scott began to huff and puff. He was evidently having some sort of asthma attack, but after a few tugs from his handy dandy rescue inhaler, he was able to muster enough wind to blow Pork Chops straw house to the ground.

Pork Chop narrowly escaped Scott’s massive jaws. Scared, and now homeless, Pork Chop ran for the nearest shelter he could see. Hambone’s house.

Scott, undeterred, chased Pork Chop to his new hiding place. Scott was very pleas

An old beekeeper had been raising bees for years. He'd had many bees he gave names to, like Buzz or Stripe or Sting. He got a kick out of naming them and he would spend hours with them crawling on his hands, looking at them, holding them gently and humming little songs.

One year, the hive had a new queen, and she was the most magnificent thing he'd ever seen. He usually gave them clever names like Honey, but this one was just too gorgeous for that. He named her Beauty, and he would hum to her everyday as the sun went down.

One day, during a particularly beautiful sunset, the old man was watching his queen as she peddled around in the palm of his hand, singing to her gently, when a gust of wind suddenly blew some debris toward his face. Without thinking, he reacted, moving his hands fast toward his face, and smashed the queen right into his own eye. And so I guess what they say is true, Beauty really is in the eye of the bee holder.

Oh boy do I have a joke for you kids! Its called the cheerio joke.

So there is this land called cheerio land and in cheerio land there are 7 classes of cheerio, 0-5 and the frosted cheerios. Now there is this level 0 cheerio. Hes homeless, living out on the street, probaly an alchoholic. But he falls in love with a frosted cheerio princess. So one day he sneaks into the royal gala and goes up to the princess and asks her "will you marry me?" Now she says "I like your style, youre a good looking guy, a bit scruffy but I like you. Tell you what I will marry you if you can become a frosted cheerio" So our guy goes back with a determination and gets a job and starts to pay off his debts. Now by having a job and his debts paid he becomes a level 1 cheerio. So he works, and he works, and he works, and he WORKS and he finally becomes a level 2 cheerio. Now he goes back to the princess and askes her again, "will you marry me?" she says "no honey you really do have to become a frosted cheerio first." So he goes back and he works and works, hes a fryboy at McGrubers or something, I dont care. So he works and he works and he gets promoted at the restraunt and is making more money. And he works and he works and he works and by having that income raise he finally becomes a level 3 cheerio. He feels sucessful for the first time in his life but he is starting to fall back on his old ways. One day he goes to the casino and he loses and he loses and he loses and he gambled all his money away and he gets fired to boot because gambling is against company policy. So he is back down to a level 1 cheerio. He gets a job on a production line at a nearby factory and determines himself not to fall back ever again. So he works and he works and he works and he works and he WORKS, level 2, level 3, and he is doing great again. He is promoted to Floor manager of the factory and he is doing great and becomes a level 4 cheerio. But then one day a rival company sabotages their operation by putting poison in their toothpaste or whatever the hell they were making. They have to pay out damages and PR and the like and they declare bankruptcy. He is knocked back down to level 2 for the lack in income. But he is hired almost straight away by a branch of a huge conglomerate because they recognized how hard of a worker he is. So he works, level 3, works, level 4, and he works and works and WORKS. So he is promoted t

So in France in the 1500s there was an old tall church, and recently, the man who rings the bells grew sick and died. So the priest decided to hold interview for the job of the bell ringer. Nobody showed up but one man, he was a tall, strong looking man, but he had no arms. The priest, not wanting to turn anyone away, gave the man an interview, he seemed qualified but the priest didn't know how he would ring the bell, so he said no "Oh please father let me do it I'll prove myself, oh it'll be the best you've ever seen" the priest decided to give him a chance, they went up the winding stairs for a while till they reached the top. The man looked at the massive bell, but with excitement not fear, he was to ring the bell 5 times. He stepped back and ran full speed hitting his face to the bell, BANG. He stepped back, a bit shook up, but he shook it off and ran at the bell again, once again with his face, BANG. He did that two more times, then after the forth time He stepped back for the grand finale. He ran full speed and smashed the bell with such force it could be heard towns over, but with the force he was knocked back over the threshold and put if the tower to his death the priest ran full speed down the stairs to find a crowd around the mangled body of the of the armless man, a man walked over the priest and said "father who was this man who fell from the tower" to which the priest replied "I never caught his name but his face rings a bell".

I won't technically be a dad for another 2 months but it's coming faster than I expected.

Yesterday I went out to eat with my wife and after dinner we contemplated going out for ice cream. As we left the restaurant though a huge storm had blown in and it was crazy windy outside. I decided that we should just go home to avoid the storm and as we drove past a Baskin Robbins my wife made a comment about how empty the store was and I quickly replied with a smile on my face "Everyone must have got wind of the storm."

It was followed by an eye roll by my wife.