Philly Today

In Tenafly, New Jersey, residents are being terrorized by a wild turkey that has turned the Bergen County town upside down. When people see this bird coming, they run for safety. The turkey has chased several people, including a mail carrier and a man who was trying to put up a sign for his garage sale. Why is this bird so scary? Probably because people have been feeding it, so now when it sees a person, it goes all roadrunner on him. According to the Associated Press, residents are “advised to clap, stomp and yell to scare the bird away”. Yeah, like that’s really gonna work. Beware the turx!

That’s right, I said “turx”. If people can abbreviate chicken “chix” by adding an x that isn’t even in the word, I feel very strongly that “turx” should be the official abbreviation for turkey. And by the way, I wouldn’t have minded it if Ben Franklin had his way and the turkey was the official national bird. Oh well, that’s enough turkey conversation for now, I need to save some for Thanksgiving.

I just read a story about some police department activity that went on last week in western Pennsylvania. What happened in the town of Greenville was that a toddler did such a good job of hiding during a game of hide-and-seek that the police and firefighters were called. Two-year-old Natalie Jasmer was finally found after an hour of searching, not by police, but by the family dog. The girl had hidden herself in a drawer under the washing machine and fell asleep there.

The part of the article that really got me thinking was the very end: “The little girl told her family she was sorry. Hide-and-seek is now banned in the Jasmer household.” Are you kidding me? The girl apologized, for what? Because nobody could find her? That’s not what should happen. What she should say is, “Um… family? You just got owned at hide-and-seek! I am the greatest kid ever to play this game!!!” It’s not her fault, she was just playing the game the way it should be played. Even the cops couldn’t find her. And they banned the game in the household!? Sounds like somebody’s just embarrassed that they suck at seeking. If I were that family I would demand a rematch.

I am left-handed or, as the cool kids call it, a “lefty”. I know other people who are lefties, and a lot of them write something that looks like this:                                                                                                                                   

What is it? It’s a backwards check mark. Why is it backwards? Because the person that wrote it was left handed. Huh?!? Left-handers get to write things backwards? I used to think a check mark was a check mark. You want an example? Here it is:

But now, apparently lefties get to write things however they want. In keeping with that rule I have a special message for all of you:

Yes, it may seem like I am putting down my own “people”, but I feel like it needed to be said. Now that the whole check mark thing is off my chest, let’s talk about something else that probably a lot of people do that makes no sense (myself included this time). When I’m signing up for an online account and they ask you to type in a password, then they ask you to type in that password again. The reason they make you type it twice is in case you make a mistake you won’t end up with a password that wasn’t what you expected. But because I am so lazy, instead of typing the password again I just copy and paste what I typed into the next field, saving about half a second but also completely defeating the purpose of the exercise. Sure I may feel like a big rebel in doing so, but now my mistake was duplicated and I will forever have to log in using “lefty20099″ with the extra 9 at the end.