Bigfoot's name was Darryl ?

April 19th,2020 I'm not Chevy Chase and he is, it's 4:45 a.m.

Another stupid day and another stupid thing,

How did they know what Helen Keller was saying when she first became able to express herself? Seems like to me the first thing she ever said was probably something like  "NNnknnpff"? I wonder if petrified dinosaur poop has a smell? If it doesn't then why doesn't the smell get petrified too? Why is it that every stupid thing that was ever done by every stupid person always seems to begin with "Watch this" or "Hold my beer" but nobody ever reports that Jonas Salk said a damn thing when he invented the cure for polio. Why do Grandpas want grandkids to pull their fingers, seems like it would be better to say "Hey kid Come here, I got something for you", they would fall for that everytime. Did any kid ever get their Mother's attention by saying "Mama, mama, Mom, Mommie, mom, mom ", a million times?

Is there a training class where Moms learn how to swat your ass with a flip flop? And how did she learn to curve it around a corner anyhow?

I wonder some of the dumbest crap. These are actual, yet occasionally fleeting things that have ran through my head at various times. A few of the millions of things that my brain makes me think about every day. It is sort of  amazing really. I don't know how I ever really get anything accomplished. It's like having one of the old 35mm slide projectors running full speed playing slide after slide on the screen, but don't worry if you didn't catch that one, It will be back soon. Crazy huh?

These things coexist right beside normal rational thought, like when I'm cutting the grass, or filling the car's gas tank. I will be reading a story and processing it and thinking about this stupid crap at the same time, when it dawns on me what the answer to a vexing problem was. Like I wasn't consciously thinking about it. The answer to Life and everything else is 42.

That is also how I taught myself how to code. Just sit down and do it and think about whatever I wanted until I figured it out. Sometimes I would work on a coding issue exclusive of everything else, and not realize I spent 12 hours analyzing the problem coming up with a fix after researching how to do it, what the language structure looked like, how to apply it, where to assign it, how to construct global versus a one time variable, using complex arrays, all things I had no idea about until I sat down and thought about it with a book or two and another computer to research with. Next thing you know, push the button, shit works, abracadabra.

Wish I knew how this works, then I could replicate it, I could teach it to others and retire wealthy.

I learned how to compute complex mathematical problems the same way. I couldn't understand how other kids didn't just see the answer like I did. Sitting in a class and some kid would say how did you do that ?, ... and I would just say "I dunno". I could read the newspaper with my mother before kindergarten started , other kids (including my brother) that could not do that were retarded, at least I thought. Apparently that's what I told one of my teachers about my little Brother George who had not started school yet. She expressed sympathy to my mother to have a little retarded child at home (who was only about 2) after having such a bright a child as Michael. My mother was mortified. As it turns out when we got home, she was pretty pissed off too. Oops. Hell I didn't know every kid couldn't read.

I struggled with Algebra for a little while and then, all of a sudden, I didn't. I taught myself how to estimate the answer to something, to get pretty damn close to the answer when I didn't exactly need to know the exact correct answer, in about two weeks by mentally breaking a problem down to its simplest terms and then upsizing my answer to fit the numbers. Check it with a calculator later and I would say the answer was 31.2 and the calculator would say 31.31 . If you are trying to figure out an average for how many miles per gallon you just got, well that's close enough. I don't know how to explain it though.

At some point I realized that if you could borrow from the left when doing subtraction, then you could also borrow to the left when doing addition. Added to that was the light bulb coming on realization that if you read stories from left to right, it makes perfect sense to read math problems the same way. You can take a long column of numbers 3 or 4 places each and read them from right to left adding down the column as you go , borrowing to the left instead of subtracting as you reach ten or better, and you can add a column of numbers in your head faster than anyone can use a calculator. What I never understood is why. Seemed simple to me.

I had a teacher who swore I had to be cheating because I would get done with tests and quizzes before everyone else and would score an  A on them. I remember her trying to explain to my mother that it wasn't possible for a second grader to do work so quickly and so accurately and when Mom would calmly ask why that was , she was flustered and would respond with "It just isn't". Mom had been through this with teachers before and would write a long addition problem on her blackboard and say to me "Michael add these up". I would look at it, give the answer and the teachers would just stand there , struggling to comprehend, mouths wide open. We would just go home, while they stood there.

My older Brother is worse than me, he can do calculus and mechanical crap the same way. It's fun to ask him stuff and listen to his TED talk in response.

I usually tell everyone I hate Advertising. I think it's mostly deceptive and crap is neither new or better. I hate the repetitive nature of it, the stupidness of a repeating telephone number, the sing song nature of filling my brain with 1-800-327- EMPIRE !!!!, today, the bullshit of wait,wait that's not all, If you act right now, just pay separate handling crap.

Sometimes however they come up with some pretty deep thoughtful stuff that is just rattle your bones funny or thoughtful and provoking. Not Not Lemu the Emu and Doug , they can die, I hate their shit with a passion reserved for bad food. There is one ad running right now from Progressive Insurance where Flo is talking to a Sasquatch in a clearing, he is lamenting that people just don't want a picture of him anymore etc, she is babbling on about Insurance, and then she calls him "BigFoot" as part of her dialogue. As in "That's just the way shit happens, BigFoot".

He looks at his foot as if he never heard the term, then looks at Flo and just realized how big his feet are and says without batting an eye says , "My Name is Darryl." I liked to died. That's funny shit right there.

Her name is Stephanie Courtney, look her up. She's made a career and a fortune playing that one character named Flo. How do you get to be worth over 6 million dollars yammering on about a name your price tool? Amazing.

Toodles,

BigMike