Consulting the oracle

Image courtesy of wikipedia. We didn't have any around.

The Charleston papers, as WV readers know, have vent lines to which people can call in to express their opinions or questions on any conceivable topic.

And they do.

The Spousal Unit is better at keeping up with these oracular statements than I am and she found a few worthy of making it to the Goat Rope Farm refrigerator. They may have deep hidden meanings or, like Zen koans, could lead to Enlightenment if only one sits and contemplates them. Here are a couple to meditate upon:

I'm just wondering if anybody else who has been eating Slim Jims lately can tell they've got a new taste to them?

And

I don't think it's right that the state provides vehicle insurance for state employees who sit around with snuff in their mouth during the course of their work day.

Finally, it seems that the lottery, which I used to describe to GED students as a tax on people who aren't very good at math, is a recurring topic of interest:

My wife and I bought a roll of 100 scratch-offs--there were three $1 winners and two $2 winners--$7 out of $100. What a joke.

Indeed.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: 7 OUT OF 100

Now that's something to think about

An out-of-state fire hydrant. Come to think of it, this one does look better than some I've seen around here.

El Cabrero has made it a practice to scan the vent lines of the local newspaper for words of wisdom and enlightenment. I'm not sure how common these are around the country, but the Charleston papers have a phone number you can call and say a few words about just about anything.

And people do.

Here's the winner for this week:

Why does West Virginia have such ugly fire hydrants? Isn't this something that would be relatively easy to fix?

Another burning issue for our times...

Big, smoky and orange

Random animal picture.

The phone in vent section of our local newspaper is a constant source of entertainment and enlightenment. Here are three of my favorites for the week. There seems to be a food theme going on.

First, there's the thick and thin of it:

There are skinny people where the food just won't stick to them no matter how much they eat. As far as someone being obese, that doesn't come from nowhere, they had to have been eating too much.

There there's Girl Scout cookies and childhood memories:

Girl Scouts, your cookies haven't shrunk, we all just grew up. When I was young, I remember I caught a bluegill that was longer than I was wide. Haven't done it lately.

I had a similar experience as a kid, when I hooked a crawdad and thought there was a whopper on the line.

But the winner for the week has to be this one:

What weighs 300 pounds, smokes, and is colored orange? A West Virginia, according to recent news reports that West Virginia leads the nation in obesity, smoking and tanning bed usage.

Now that's an image that sticks in your head.