The Department of Stringing Random Topics Together in One Post has its work cut out for it today because it has to weave the following topics into a coherent narrative: ways to screw up the making of a pot of drip coffee, alligator attacks, Hail Mary football plays, the world record for human female tongue circumference and last but not least, Mountain Chicken Frogs.
I’ll start with the coffee. I like to bring a mug of freshly-brewed coffee up to our bedroom in the morning to lure my wife into a vertical position relative to the Earth’s gravitational field. If the coffee doesn’t get her vertical, I generally massage her feet for a couple of minutes while she remains horizontal. (I swear on all the Tim Horton’s restaurants in the known Universe that I am NOT bullshitting you about the coffee-bringing or the foot-massaging.)
I usually set everything up the night before. It’s not that hard, actually: check the carafe for lurkage of leftover coffee: grind the beans: put them in the basket: put the basket in the coffeemaker: fill the water reservoir: press two buttons on the coffeemaker (One button is “On” and the other is “Bold”, in case you were wondering.) then wait seven minutes. A chimp, a Federal Civil Servant and maybe even Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau could likely be trained to do it. My money is on the chimp though.
That said, there was a very bleak period in my life a while back during which I experienced a series of unfortunate coffee-related events.
The worst event-classified as Level 3 and also known as a “No Room At The Inn” event-occurs when you forget to check the carafe for cold, lurking, leftover coffee before initiating the launch sequence. That can result in a waterfall of cold coffee mixed with hot coffee cascading out of the carafe and on to the kitchen floor, accompanied by a stream (no pun intended) of swearing.
Level 2 events-also known as “Dry Fires” in the world of firearms- consist of watching steaming, clear water pour into your mug after grinding the beans but forgetting to put them in the basket or worse yet, skipping the coffee-loading step entirely by leaving the beans in the cupboard. Level 2 events also include swearing.
A Level 1 event-also known as a “Dry Hole” in homage to the Alberta oil industry – is the easiest to recover from. A Dry Hole basically consists of tilting the carafe, in expectation that a stream of life-giving elixir will gush forth into your cup but instead, nothing happens. Either you forgot to fill the water reservoir or else you forgot to press the two buttons. Or both. Swearing is optional for a Level 1 event.
Anyway, swearing aside, in the final analysis it’s just coffee for Heaven’s sake. Don’t let any of these caffeine-related events ruin your morning. Besides, things could be worse. You could be minding your own business driving a golf cart on a path beside a pond somewhere in Ave Maria, Florida when suddenly a good-sized alligator charges you, fortunately misses the cart and then slides a few feet to the other side of the path.
And what’s more, Kamala Harris might be lurking nearby, as is clearly the case when you watch and listen to this short clip.
The weird thing is that the still photo below was also included in the article and you can clearly see a duck in the foreground. Or maybe it’s a seagull.
That duck/seagull is nowhere to be found in the full-length clip: https://news.yahoo.com/watch-alligator-attacks-2-people-180927535.html?
What the duck?
I have a theory about all this and my theory is as follows: we are looking at two different events here. The people in that cart have probably trained TWO alligators. One of the alligators is grumpy and likes to chase golf carts. The other alligator is more friendly and docile. The cart people sent out a scout cart to stir up the grumpy gator, then followed the scout cart in their cart, which was equipped with at least one pink golf bag.
After the grumpy alligator rushed their cart, the cart people circled back for a photo opportunity with their other friendly, smiling alligator who came up to be patted on the head, accompanied by its pet duck, Nestor.
Note that the duckless, cart-chasing alligator looks sly, is longer and appears to be generally more menacing than the shorter, duck-equipped alligator. It’s not the same alligator or I’m a monkey’s uncle.
I think the whole thing is a Deep Fake. I also think that video is what people (me, primarily) call a Hail Mary video. First of all, it was filmed in Ave Maria, which is Latin for “Hail Mary.” Coincidence? I think not.
Second of all, a Hail Mary is an often-desperate, last-ditch football play; usually it’s a low-probability, long pass into the end zone: hopefully the other team’s end zone. Anyway, my point is that a Hail Mary video is something that is posted on-line or sent to a news station in a desperate, contrived attempt to gain notoriety or at least, to get some more likes.
I could be wrong but I don’t think I am.
Speaking of likes, if you like football, you definitely should click on the Hail Mary hyperlink above (no pun intended) and read about the origin of the play, dating back to at least 1922 and maybe even as far back as 1500 BC.
If you don’t like alligators and/or their pet ducks, don’t go tooling around the suburbs of Ave Maria, Florida in a golf cart without protective gear.
If you’re into tongues, the 2023 Guinness Book Of World Records features a tongue belonging to flautist Jennifer DuVander. Jennifer is the proud owner of the muscular female hydrostat having the largest circumference in the world-as far as we know.
That circumference, 5.21 inches, was officially measured by a dentist who wrapped a piece of dental floss (what else?) around the tongue and then measured the length of the floss. Well played.
Here is Jennifer (at left) proudly displaying her certificate and her muscular hydrostat:
The muscularity of her prodigious oral protuberance apparently helps Jennifer to play fast notes on her flute. She can also touch the tip of her nose with her tongue.
Well, I’m running out of time so I’ll leave you with this aphorism: “If you’ve got it, flaunt it.” And if you can’t think of anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all. Just hold your tongue.
P.S. I forgot about the Mountain Chicken Frog.
The Department of Lateral Thinking 
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