Curing Cabin Fever through 'Global Wqrming'?

Ozark Knob

Northern Arkansas

Exploring Izard County

(Photo by EIC Team)

As you can see from the above photo taken by one of the EIC team, the Arkansas Ozarks are covered by snow and chilled by cold these early days of January. Old folks just north of Izard County, like my Uncle Cran in northern Fulton County, are staying indoors, when they're not outside doing chores like feeding and watering their cattle, and that weather-enforced incarceration is leading to a bit of cabin fever.

Apparently, old folks to the west over in the Kansas flatlands around Topeka are suffering similar weather and similar fever, as the case of my Cousin Bill attests, for he and Uncle Cran had an online 'conversation' the other day, beginning with a suggestion from Cousin Bill in response to a prior email from Uncle Cran concerning some sort of vocally challenged tongue-twister called 'Global Wqrming', apparently an ironic comment on the arctic cold that's recently hit the States.

Anyway, that prior email, with its orthographically challenged subject heading, cued Cousin Bill to suggest a way for Uncle Cran to keep warm:

Grab the pilfered McDonald's straws (from one of your big-night-out-on-the-town trips), grab the longest extension cord you've got, plug it in at the house (or if long enough at Polk & Reta's place -- "a penny saved is a penny earned"), attach the foregoing to your Sears drill equipped with a 6-inch-plus bit (only slightly larger in diameter than the straw), and meander down to or up to or whichever way to the pond, drill some holes in about a minute and install the Big Mac straws in the vertical holes. If those cows get thirsty enough they'll figure it out. No more time-consuming ice chopping with the axe! And you'll have more time to nestle in that warm chair, read, drink hot chocolate and casually pet those dogs.

Another plus -- after sucking water through straws over the next month and a half those cows will probably be able to whistle -- making for some pretty background music on pleasantly warm spring evenings when you're sparking on the front porch swing.

Just an "idée" from one of your favorite nephews (with some extra time on his hands tonight).

Tell your Better Half I said hello!

Nephew Bill

(Did I mention I had A BAD CASE of cabin fever?) And is Rita spelled Reta? Just curious. And your Subject Line -- What the heck is Global Wqrming?

In response to that snarky if weirdly humorous email from Cousin Bill, Uncle Cran replied:

We don't need to pilfer straws. We just wash the two we got years ago and recycle. Cows are set in their ways. They would just eat the straws, then die of thirst. They're funny that way. A guy told me that when you see a cow walking across the pasture, she is looking for a hole in the fence, or a place to die. As for whistling cows, please note that they can't pucker their lips. Instead, in frustration, they will attack you, break your hip, and leave you maimed for life.

As for sparking on the front porch, let me mention a recent trip to the Stage store. I was looking at the perfumes, and the saleslady recommended one titled, "Pleasures." I asked instead, "Do you have something called, "Distant Memories?"

Your powers of observation are fading. My better half is worse at this time, with a bad head-and-chest cold. Be careful how you speak to your bride! Cabin fever can escalate to serious consequences.

You are letting down on your self-appointed task as context, grammar, punctuation, and grammar police. You failed to correct my spelling of dogs, where I hit a "t" instead of "d". (Or perhaps you have given up trying to reform me).

Reta spells her name R E T A. Of course it is single spacing, with only the R capitalized. She, (as I also), got her name like the little boy got his whipping. He didn't have any say in the matter, it was just given to him.

Global warning was created in the fevered brain of former VP Al Gore. It worked for him, as he has become famous, and honored with a coveted prize. Of course, as we recently learned;, you don't really have to do anything to get one.

I appreciate your concern. And our responses demonstrate that cabin fever leaves us with too much time on our hands. We then waste these valuable moments with nonsensical email postings.

Your (favorite?) uncle, Cran

And I waste my time here in the 'Frozen Chosun' posting their nonsense. Well, things could be worse. I could be wasting even more time fisking this 'conversation' all to pieces! But it sort of fisks itself, especially Uncle Cran's response, with his by now long-familiar bid for our sympathy with the passive-aggressive reminder of his suffering at the hands of Cousin Bill due to the latter's repeated editorial attacks (note the twice-adduced and thus once-otiose term "grammar"), not to mention the pitiful reminder of his suffering at the hooves of oddly frustrated, infamous 'cows' due to those beasts' attack back in November 2008 (Uncle Cran apparently having forgotten that not a herd of cows, but merely a single steer attacked him).

All the same, greetings from a fellow sufferer of Cabin Fever, this infirm soul stuck in Seoul.

Hodges & Hodges Financial Advice for Failed NY Bankers

Still A Working Farm?

Photo Circa 1972/73

(Somewhere near Topeka, Kansas)

In the disinterested interest of helping a select few of those many poor folks rendered unemployed by the recession that has accompanied this current financial mess, Cousin Bill and I offer this free advice to you bankers: Move to Kansas and take up farming.

"But," you may well protest, "I'm a New York banker who knows nothing about running a farm."

No problem. You didn't know anything about running a bank either, but your ignorance didn't keep your confidence in check. If you can simply regain that level of ignorant confidence, you will be well-qualified for the farm 'job' that we can offer you.

Here's the deal, which we shall elucidate in the rambling Hodges style. Cousin Bill (along with somebody named "LeRoy") was on one of his "Weekly Ramblings" through Kansas and vicinity, taking in the broad vistas that stretch from one grain elevator to the very next one eleven miles off in the majestic distance. Up close, these elevators look somewhat like the one above, and they are quite elevating, in our opinion. Cousin Bill, for instance, had an elevated conversation with a local farmer in Offerle (a town name to have fun with):

At an Offerlie service station, LeRoy and I briefly conversed (talked "farming that way") awhile with a tall, lean, elderly, grain elevator baseball hatted farmer, obviously in need of communication with someone other than a prairie dog. He advised "his farming now consisted of collecting a monthly check from the state of Kansas, that entity paying him more to idle his ground than he was making with his corn and alfalfa crops." He did tell us, "the main reason Kansas did that was 'cause they found he was pumping out way too much ground water for irrigation, and said if he'd shut off the pumps they'd just pay him not to grow." He was a nice guy, interesting and would have talked for several hours if we'd had the time.

This nice, interesting guy had an odd propensity to speak of himself in the third person, as evidenced by Cousin Bill's quotes, but let's not focus on marginal things. The important point is that you need only threaten to pump ground water to irrigate your Kansas farm, and the Great State of Kansas will pay you a good money not to pump that water.

"Hold on," you may well say. "I'm already not pumping ground water in Kansas, but I haven't received any money."

Yes, that happens, so we have to ask a personal question. Have you actually threatened to pump water? Cousin Bill and I thought not. Moreover, and this is the sticking part, you need to actually have some land in Kansas, else the threat won't work. Allow us to anticipate your next objection that you own no land in Kansas and have no money to purchase any. Well, don't let your New York state of penury close you off from your Kansas state of pecuniary reward. There's free land in Kansas:

Several communities in Kansas are offering free land and other incentives. Our goal is to help our rural areas sustain and grow economically. We welcome you to take a look at the various communities.

Just visit the website of Kansas Free Land, choose your preferred isolation, settle down to the modern farming way of life, and covertly but unmistakeably threaten to pump some of that precious Kansas ground water. We guarantee you that this will work if you just have the right degree of ignorant confidence. Of course, you may have learned something about basic economics from your recent debacle, so you might need to forget some of that. You need only learn not to ask too many questions about whether this all makes any sense and just wait for the money to start rolling in to your account in a local bank (if there is one) in return for your not farming.

Technically, you'll still be unemployed, but at least you'll have land, home, and cash . . . a bit like what you had before. Not quite as much money, of course, but beggars can't be choosers.

Come to Kansas, you wunch of bankers!

By the way, click on that explanatory link only if you're not offended by certain 'expletives' in fiction . . . a bit of expletive infixation, one might say.