Awards for which there should be a Day
Among the world’s great inventions — for which there should be a week of celebration — is the mute button. A day isn’t enough, give it a week.
I don’t bother checking the background for such recognitions, I just know an inventive person came upon the idea of silencing the room while watching either a sportscast or political gobbledygook.
The mute buttons on my television’s hand-held controls are worn thin. As soon as there is a hint from either political party that an announcement is eminent, the mute is activated.
There’s really no reason to listen to promises of giveaways, change and errors of others. We get the same diatribe every four years from Congress and President and every six years from the Senate.
Each will give us gifts that even Santa wouldn’t promise. Each will tax the other guy, never you and me. We’ll get promised roads, bridges, canals, sewers lines and mass transit, and it won’t cost ‘YOU? anything.
Hit the mute!
Praise be the mute button founder.
Then comes the 40 seconds between football plays, and — Lord Almighty — we get 15 different camera angles on replays, each being analyzed by someone semi-familiar with the sport, but really gifted in adding words to a situation we just watched.
Newsflash to tv producers:
TELEVISION IS A VISUAL THING!
We can see the action. No need for someone to give us the background, ancestry and future of each of the eleven on each side of the football.
Seems like every player in the National Football League IS an all-pro, an automatic All-League selection and will take his team to the Super Bowl.
Every receiver has greater hands than Bulova put on a watch, and they are more deceptive than OJ.
Each lineman is bigger and stronger than anyone since Paul Bunyan. Tight ends are loose, quarterbacks are dimes, fullbacks more explosive than TNT and centers cannot be compared to plumbers.
Hit the mute!
Praise be the mute button founder.
If you haven’t got my message . . . I don’t need the noise. Time-outs on the football field should be for rest, refills and reflection. Advertisers can gear their message toward sports bars with their 66-screen outlets.
Yes, I feel the same way about baseball, basketball and golf time-fillers.
If you don’t agree with my Mute Button Week, you can turn the page of this newspaper.
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Now, back to what Jottings are ‘sposed to be about: Limerick time.
An unfortunate young lady named Piles
Had the ugliest bottom for miles;
But her surgeon took pity
And made it so pretty:
All dimples, and poutings, and smiles.
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In Uncle John’s Book for Johns is a recipe to cure baldness. We go back to 17th century Scotland for this one. ‘Wash the head with dog urine, and you shall not be bald.? Sorry, Mickey, and others. It’s too late.
Same book: Americans use 250 million square yards of duct tape a year.
And, ever wonder if illiterate people get the full effect of alphabet soup?
A George Carlin-ism: ‘The other night I ate at a nice family restaurant. Every table had an argument going on.?
Closing with a ‘bat fact? you’ll love: Vampire bats drink blood through a ‘drinking straw? that the bat makes with its tongue and its lower lip. The bats? saliva contains an anticoagulant that keeps blood flowing by impeding the formation of blood clots.