Sunday News

 

The Palmville Globe Volume 1 Number 49

Man Completes Long-Deferred Repair

Joe McDonnell, 78 and a resident of Palmville Township, Minnesota, recently rehung a bathroom curtain that had been dangling for some time. "I generally hate a dangling curtain," McDonnell tells the press, "but this curtain was in a remote part of the house rarely seen by anyone other than myself. When we put a second bathroom upstairs for guests, my wife glued Velcro strips onto the sink and stuck a curtain onto the strips to conceal the cleaning supplies underneath. Someone pulled on the curtain the wrong way and one of the strips came off leaving one end of the curtain dangling. Before I could repair the curtain, we built a guesthouse and from then on only I used the upstairs bathroom. The materials for doing the curtain repair job were scattered all over the house, garage, and workshop so it never got fixed. Over several days recently I brought all the needed materials to the bathroom and made the repair,  leaving the clamps holding the freshly glued Velcro in place overnight." A reporter visiting the bathroom found the curtain hanging perfectly straight with no cleaning supplies in view.

Man Gets Stuck at Airport

Joe McDonnell, 78 and a seasoned traveler, recently got tied up at a regional airport. "The nearest airports to us are one, two, and three hours away," McDonnell tells reporters. "When friends were looking for tickets to visit us, I told them to get tickets to the least expensive destination which turned out to be the airport three hours away. The last time I had been to this airport more than ten years ago I could drive right up to the terminal to pick up my visitors. When I got to the airport this time I discovered a not quite completed parking ramp blocking access to the terminal. Cardboard signs directed me into a narrow corridor full of cars waiting for people who  appeared from the terminal in dribs and drabs. My friends called and said they were in the corridor but I couldn't see them. The scene reminded me of a movie I had seen about the Baghdad airport during the war. I inched my way along the gauntlet till I found my friends. When they got in, they both mentioned how warm my car was. It was a very cold night."

Happy International Squib Day!

Squib is my name for an aphorism or epigram or what the French call a bon mot. The other definition of squib is - a small firework that hisses before exploding. 

On International Squib Day I salute all those trying to avoid a damp squib which only hisses and never goes off in the reader's mind.

Thank you for your indulgence -

The nicest thing an old person can give the family at Christmas is a list of things they want for Christmas. 

The poet laments the flower that blooms unseen in its mountain nook. 

Actually, it’s seen by other flowers in their nooks who wonder why the poet’s flower thinks it’s so great. 

One language is not better than another.

It depends on what you're trying to say.

Russian is good for physics; French for philosophy.

And if you're discussing snow, ice or seal blubber, Inuktitut is best.

As you ascend the mountain - eyes on the ground, with the summit who knows where, it's good to turn occasionally and look at the beautiful valley you're climbing out of.

If you have a brilliant psychological insight you want to share with the world, tack it onto twenty preceding anecdotes about how your insight has helped people. 

Then blow the whole thing up into a book and go flog it on tour. 

It’s never too late to start keeping a diary. 

By December of the first year, there’ll be stuff written back in January you’d completely forgotten about.