Red Mosquito

Farmer John wrote:

doug rr wrote:

Chris_H_2 wrote:

bodysnatcher wrote:I've never understood the allure of eating (shelled) sunflower seeds. Or maybe I'm just not good at it.

oh my god, i would go through a bag of these every doubleheader in high school baseball. very satisfying.

on the bench?

A baseball field really is the only appropriate place to eat shelled sunflower seeds.

doug rr wrote:have any of you ever drank out of a cup of Copenhagen spit accidentally?

Chris_H_2 wrote:

doug rr wrote:have any of you ever drank out of a cup of Copenhagen spit accidentally?

during my first summer working at a budweiser distributor in college i had to sort bottles and stack them on a pallet. my buddy then drove a forklift and had to set one pallet on another. one time when he had a pallet of empties raised above his cage he started moving backwards which caused the pallet to tip forward and crash all over him. most of the empties (56 cases worth) were filled with dip spit. he didn't return to work for the rest of the week.

Carl Sandburg wrote:There is a wolf in me . . . fangs pointed for tearing gashes . . . a red tongue for raw meat . . . and the hot lapping of blood—I keep this wolf because the wilderness gave it to me and the wilderness will not let it go.

There is a fox in me . . . a silver-gray fox . . . I sniff and guess . . . I pick things out of the wind and air . . . I nose in the dark night and take sleepers and eat them and hide the feathers . . . I circle and loop and double-cross.

There is a hog in me . . . a snout and a belly . . . a machinery for eating and grunting . . . a machinery for sleeping satisfied in the sun—I got this too from the wilderness and the wilderness will not let it go.

There is a fish in me . . . I know I came from salt-blue water-gates . . . I scurried with shoals of herring . . . I blew waterspouts with porpoises . . . before land was . . . before the water went down . . . before Noah . . . before the first chapter of Genesis.

There is a baboon in me . . . clambering-clawed . . . dog-faced . . . yawping a galoot's hunger . . . hairy under the armpits . . . here are the hawk-eyed hankering men . . . here are the blonde and blue-eyed women . . . here they hide curled asleep waiting . . . ready to snarl and kill . . . ready to sing and give milk . . . waiting—I keep the baboon because the wilderness says so.

There is an eagle in me and a mockingbird . . . and the eagle flies among the Rocky Mountains of my dreams and fights among the Sierra crags of what I want . . . and the mockingbird warbles in the early forenoon before the dew is gone, warbles in the underbrush of my Chattanoogas of hope, gushes over the blue Ozark foothills of my wishes—And I got the eagle and the mockingbird from the wilderness.

O, I got a zoo, I got a menagerie, inside my ribs, under my bony head, under my red-valve heart—and I got something else: it is a man-child heart, a woman-child heart: it is a father and mother and lover: it came from God-Knows-Where: it is going to God-Knows-Where—For I am the keeper of the zoo: I say yes and no: I sing and kill and work: I am a pal of the world: I came from the wilderness.

bodysnatcher wrote:I spilled half a bottle of cranberry juice into my washing machine today

Jorge wrote:I feel like I can finally talk about this now that we got some good news, but man it’s been weighing on me lately.

Both my dad and I have a history of skin cancer. We’ve both had moles removed that turned out to be basal cell carcinomas, which are usually pretty contained and easy to remove. His situation has probably been worsened by years spent working as an architect under the blistering sun. Me, I avoid the sun as much as humanly possible, so I’ve only had the one.

But when it comes to skin cancer, basal cell carcinomas are the "easy" ones. Then there’s melanoma, which is much more serious because it can metastasize and spread to other organs.

A few weeks ago, my dad got checked for a dark patch of skin on his shoulder, and it turned out to be melanoma.

There are four severity stages of melanoma: 1A, 1B, 2A, and 2B -- with 2B being the worst. This whole week I’ve been bracing myself for bad news ahead of his doctor’s visit today. But it turns out his melanoma is at stage 1A -- as early and mild as it gets when it comes to melanoma. That means it’s very thin, hasn’t spread, and the chances of it becoming a serious issue are extremely low. Most people at stage 1A just need a minor surgical removal and regular check-ups.

Take care of your skin, people!