Deer hunting, the economy, and proper English

An Apple tree has apples, a cherry tree has cherries, a Peach tree has peaches, and a Walnut tree has walnuts. So why does an Oak tree have acorns?

Just wondering.

* * *

The deer hunting gun season starts this weekend. It brings back memories of many of my less than successful hunts. One of the hunting stories I heard that made me feel better about myself as a deer hunter involved a co-worker who was deer hunting one day, and the barrel fell off his shotgun.

I never had that happen to me; but it seems like the rest of the things that could possibly go wrong, did go wrong.

I had the biggest deer I ever saw come out right where I was sitting a minute before at the Motz’s woods. The only trouble was I was down at the corner of the woods walking back when I saw it. Nobody ever accused me of being a Private York with a shotgun, but I did empty the gun in the deer’s direction.

The big buck ran across the road, stopped and looked back as if to say, "What the hell was that all about?"

He had just met ol’ bauer — the hunter.

* * *

I liken our current economic situation to a mother who worries so much about her children’s health that she doesn’t take care herself. We as a country are stretched so thin all over the world doing who knows what, and we have to change that.

So what should we do? We need to pull back to our shores and right the ship before venturing out again on one of those costly crusades. I don’t think we’ve even paid for the Vietnam War yet, and we’ve had two more Wars in Iraq since then -- not to mention the skirmishes we’ve gotten into.

I think we ought to have at least a fifty-year moratorium on wars. Especially those that aren’t that necessary.

It’s time.

No more following the Japanese into Korea. No more following the French into Vietnam (French Indochina.) No more following the British, Russians, and the French into the Middle East (Ottoman Empire.) And no more following the Russians into Afghanistan.

* * *

Isn’t it amazing how many prescription pills we take as we get older? I recently acquired a few more of them; but because one was pulled off the market, I got to reading those pamphlets the pharmacy sends home that tells a person what it is they’re taking and what it might do to them.

Dry cough, liver damage, bleeding, and a bunch of other unwanted things. All of a sudden I think I’d feel better without these pills.

Then I got to wondering why these pills are so expensive, other than the fact that the drug companies are trying to keep up with the oil companies and make unimaginable profits. One of my pills contains corn starch, lactose, magnesium stearate, pregelatinized starch, sodium bicarbonate powder, and red ferric oxide. I call all of this filler.

Sounds like Strawberry Jell-O, doesn’t it?

* * *

As we get closer to Christmas (yes, I’m aware it’s really a long ways off) we get more and more ads in our newspaper. Now it seems like the paper contains 2/3 ads and 1/3 news. I think all this stuff is neat, but it’s not from my generation.

Just get me a Lionel train. I can’t figure those video games out anyway.

* * *

I come from a place called Geezerville, but I’m not so old that I don’t enjoy what I call good pop music. The latest song that caught my ear is Human. It’s by a group called The Killers. They appeared on Saturday Night Live not too long ago.

They’ve been catching flak about a particular word in the song. The lyrics go:

Are we human?

Or are we dancer?

I guess they have a problem with the words we and dancer. One’s plural and one’s singular. The critics wanted dancers.

Me, I have Jean to try and make my writings look like proper English; and for that I’m lucky. Meanwhile I’ll keep on enjoying the song.

Are we human?

Or are we dancer?

Until the next time . . .