Chink-kachink

Skip Birongin
Blog
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Shorts
13 years

It’s eleven PM. I finally turn off the TV and find myself resting my eyes in the quiet and listening to Aunt Erma’s grandfather clock. It ticks and tocks and ticks and tocks away the seconds, as it always has. But they are not ticks and tocks””they are chinks and kachinks, its own unique language that, in any event, says the same as all clocks””tick and tock, tick and tock.

And I listen. And I become uncomfortable when I discover that the chink-kachink, chink-kachink seems to have somehow become in sync with my heartbeat. Systolic-diastolic, systolic-diastolic””the language of life.

And I am frozen momentarily. What if it stops? I feel as though I dare not move.

And then, a dog barks in the neighborhood. I look up. I Rub my eyes, rise from my chair and head for bed. But I can still hear the chink-kachink, chink-kachink out in the living room. I can never escape it.

Eventually, the rhythm of time that startled me earlier gently takes me by the hand and escorts me into a deep slumber. Just as it does for small children and puppies.

 

Can’t win if you don’t play

Skip Birongin
Blog
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Reverie
13 years
5
My most recent loser…

I bought my weekly Florida lottery ticket at the grocery store this afternoon. A buck a week. That’s the extent of my investment in the slim probability of winning a couple of million dollars (well, $1.22 million after the government takes its cut), or, more specifically, one chance in about 18 million. (I feel compelled to point out here that the federal government did not contribute its thirty-nine cent share to the cause, but you can bet your bum they will want their thirty-nine percent share of the winnings. But I digress.)

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We can do better than this…

Skip Birongin
Blog
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Polity
13 years
3

Polity: A particular form of political system or government.

Compliments of the kids at Mabel I. Wilson Elementary School in Cumberland, Maine.

I have read that the reason certain people tend to use profanity to express themselves is often because they simply do not have the intellectual or educational capacity to better articulate their disdain for one thing or another. It seems to me that those who revert to name calling, as one might hear during an elementary school recess, are similarly challenged:

“I don’t agree with you and, therefore, you are a:

moron/idiot/liar/traitor/bimbo/ideologue/hypocrite/dummy/loser/fearmongerer/political hack, and a rich SOB!”

Well, okay, it’s unlikely that we would hear such things out on the playground (I hope). But you get the picture.

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Duct tape and baling wire

Skip Birongin
Blog
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Reverie
13 years
2

Mowing the lawn yesterday, I noticed the duct tape I had wrapped around the PVC water line leading into my home about a year ago was beginning to deteriorate. I had applied it in order to secure some pipe insulation. It was easily replaced.

I also recently used my trusty roll of silvery tape to reinforce the connection between the lint duct coming out of the back of my clothes dryer to the aluminum duct leading through the wall to the outdoors. (It occurs to me that this was probably the first time in my life I used duct tape on an actual duct.)

There has never been a time since my birth when I a roll of duct tape was not within easy reach. And, as I have posited before, there seems to be no end to its utility.

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Air Force One gets the bird

Skip Birongin
Blog
·
Polity
13 years

Polity: A particular form of political system or government.

The following is a fictional (barely) account of how federal officials might handle the undesirable effects of birds flying, willy-nilly, around our nation’s airports, thus putting birds, aircraft and passengers in harm’s way. The narrative could apply to any given time in the modern era; I encourage you to fill in the names of the participants as you see fit. This essay was inspired by an editorial in the Wall Street Journal entitled “Cook These Geese.”

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