Category: Rev. Joe Dirt’s Ramblings

The unsolicited, unreasoned, uninformed, unapologetic opinions of Rev. Joe Dirt

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3 Buck Chuck

My lady friend has a childhood friend that is an opera singer and lives mostly in Milan, Italy and spends some time in New York City. 

Recently for health reasons she was in St. Louis for an extended stay.  Her Maestro was flying from California to New York, and decided to stop in St. Louis to visit one of his sopranos and a friend.  My girlfriend opened her house to them and had a small dinner party with the Maestro cooking.

I had asked about one of the wines that was brought that I especially liked.  It turned out it was an inexpensive wine from one of the local Italian grocery stores.  The Maestro then told how he bought 3 Buck Chuck aka Charles Shaw wines from Trader Joes 3 cases at a time.  Continue reading “3 Buck Chuck”

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Papa Deo / Papa Day-o?

Back in the day when I was married, my wife “bedopted” a little girl, Lindsey, almost from birth.  We really did not have custody of her, but her mother had issues she was working through.  The child was in our home nearly as much as she was in her mother’s for several years.

We also had a cassette tape (remember those) of children’s songs by Raffi.  Lindsey loved Raffi and we would play it for her whenever we were in the car.  Me being who I am loved to sing along on the Banana Boat song, probably because I could bellow “day-o” at the top of my voice.  Lindsey began to call be Papa Deo.  Continue reading “Papa Deo / Papa Day-o?”

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Press 1 for English – a little progress

If you read my early post “Press 1 for English, NO Thanks” you might remember my frustration at calling to activate my credit card and being forced to select 1 for English or 2 for Spanish.  I did neither and called the Customer Service number to get my card activated.  While I had them on the phone I gave them an earful about the activation line not defaulting to English after a set period of time.

Well the card expired and they sent me a new one.  Again I had to have the card activated.  I was prepared to go through the whole scenario once more.    When the automated process picked up it told me to “Press 1 for English or Prensa dos a continuar en espanol.”    I did neither again, but much to my delight after a short pause the automated process continued in ENGLISH.

I do not know if my complaint was the impetus, or maybe several complaints, but I do know it is changed.

Sometimes the little man does win a small victory.

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I miss Windows 98

I’m running XP Professional and recently defragmented my hard drive.

It had me thinking about Windows 98 that seemed to need defragmenting about every other day. Watching the defrag process run under Windows 98 was my introduction to meditation!

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WTF

I do not have an explanation for this picture. I assume that some very twisted Photoshopper had way too much magic marker…Or there were large amounts of alcohol or banned substances involved.

Perhaps someone out there has a hypothesis for this image. If so please enlighten the rest of us.

WFT
Click to see larger image

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More Jack Handey

I can picture in my mind a world without War, a world without Hate. and I can picture us attacking that world, because they’d never expect it.

A child’s face says it all. Especially the mouth part.

When I was a kid my favorite relative was Uncle Caveman. After school we’d all go play in his cave, and every once in a while he would eat one of us. Continue reading “More Jack Handey”

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A Jack Handey Fable

I remember I was hammering on a fence in the backyard when Dad approached. He was carrying a letter or something in his hand, and he looked worried. I continued to hammer as he came toward me.

“Son,” he said, “why are you hammering on that fence? It already has plenty of nails in it.”

“Oh, I’m not using nails,” I replied. “I’m just hammering.” With that, I returned to my hammering. Continue reading “A Jack Handey Fable”

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One kickass weekend

Occasionally we have those days that are so exceedingly memorable that they become milestones or at least touchstones in our lives.

I had one such day in November of 2000. I was at Oklahoma Memorial Stadium to watch OU defeat their hated rival Nebraska. They went on to win the National Championship that year. Immediately after that game I jumped in my vehicle and high-tailed it to Dallas to see Tina Turner and Joe Cocker in concert. It was Tina’s farewell concert tour and the lady still absolutely killed them.

I introduced my girlfriend to one of my all time favorite artists,  Jimmy LaFave, Continue reading “One kickass weekend”

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You don’t still use a screen saver, do you?

By Don Willmott , Forecast Earth Correspondent

I’m happy that at this stage in my career I often find myself writing articles about energy-efficient ways to use computers, peripherals, gadgets, and consumer electronics. It makes me feel so, you know, virtuous.

Whenever I crank out a list of helpful hints, one of the first items I include is this obvious but often overlooked gem of advice: Kill your stupid screen saver. In the good old days of tube monitors, screen savers such as those unforgettable flying toasters were invented to prevent burn-in, a permanent shadow branded into the phosphors of your monitor by a static image of, say, a spreadsheet that you left on your screen all weekend. Continue reading “You don’t still use a screen saver, do you?”

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Bad golfer vs. bad skydiver

What is the difference between a bad golfer and a bad skydiver?

A bad golfer goes, “Whack, DANG!”

A bad skydiver goes, “Dang, WHACK!”