Tuesday, September 20, 2005

Tuesday Moanin'

(A blog/writing exercise in the style of the late Detroit Free Press "Feature
Page" columnist, Bob Talbert.)

...I don't need an alarm clock. Every weekday morning a Yellow Cab pulls
up to the curb at 7:30 a.m. and blasts the horn two times to announce his
arrival. He waits patiently for two minutes, blasts the horn again (twice),
and waits another two minutes. Just as he is about to pull away from the
curb, a fat black lady comes running out from the front door, waving frantically.
It's always the same routine and I always wonder why she is never ready for
the cab's arrival!
...also every weekday morning from September to June, the "Latin Dad's Club"
assembles at the same curb at 8:15 a.m. They chat quietly until the schoolbus
arrives at 8:25 a.m., load their children onboard, wave goodbye, and dissappear.
...occasionally I hit the "next blog" button on the top of the page and read a
few random blogs. I skip anything with animated hearts and teddybears, anything
that looks like the work of a lovesick teenage girl, anything written in an Asian
language, anything by a new mother that includes pictures of her newborn child,
and finally, anything written in French. I will check out blogs written in Spanish,
Portuguese, and usually, Italian.
...continuing on the subject of blogs, I really dislike it when a commercial enterprise
uses the space as a free advertisement. I dislike it even more when I receive spam
from someone who clicked my e-mail link to solicit my business. Those messages
go right into the trash bin, just like real junk mail.
...a possible solution to spam would be a feature that would allow a person to return
an e-mail as if it were unopened. Spam the spammer!
...if I surf blogs in the morning, my interest and attention wanes about halfway thru
my second cup of coffee. If I am surfing them at night, I lose interest when I am
bored enough to fall asleep.