Life of Brian

Veteran’s Memorial Park on Hilton Head Island

1. This morning we stopped on the way to work to take some cash out of the ATM. Donna sat in the car, I walked up to the building and inserted my card into the machine. For every button I push on the ATM it emits a pleasant little beep.

Donna could hear some birds off to the right in a lie of hedges between the bank and a home. She also heard what she thought was a different bird coming from the big tree near the ATM where I stood.

Donna heard the birds on her right move over towards me and the other bird. At the same time, as I wound down my transaction, I heard a couple of very noisy birds so close that it sounded like they were in the ATM alcove with me.

The birds I heard were in the tree not the ATM alcove and the different bird she heard in the tree was my ATM button presses. So, did the beeping ATM talk those birds into moving from the hedge into the tree?

2. On our lunch time walk as we passed the car we could hear a crow in a tree in the pasture next to the plant, “Caw, caw. Caw, Caw.”

The Weather Channel was calling for a 30% chance of evening showers, so we had left the top down with the cockpit cover on, but the skies were now looking kind of dicey. As we walked, we discussed whether or not to just put the top up. I thought that it was probably going to be OK with it down as the clouds didn’t look like big rain producers, but I was not real certain.

As we neared the car on the way back, that same crow was still speaking loudly, “Caw Caw! Caw Caw!” It seemed like he was talking to us and it sounded like he was saying, “Top up! Top up!” So we put it up.

The other night as we sat in the Flying Pie in Newberry waiting for our pizza I was enjoying a song over their sound system and then the next one too. I hadn’t heard either tune before, but when they finished the DJ (do you still call them that?) mentioned the titles and that they were cover tunes. It was a satellite radio channel and we were in the middle of a Coffee Covers segment.

Usually if a song is real good, a cover of that song will be real good as well. It is pretty hard to ruin a great song (although most piped in grocery store music is the exception to this rule.) Sometimes the cover can be even better than the original, case in point, Gary Jules cover of a Tears For Fear song, Mad World from the Movie Donnie Darko or the Bangles cover of Simon & Garfunkel’s Hazy Shade of Winter.

The new Lincoln car commercials are using cover tunes to plug their new MKX. I kind of like the redo of The Church’s Under The Milky Way, but I’m not too sure about the Blue Oyster Cult Burnin’ For You redo.

When we remodeled the bathrooms a year and a half ago we bought fancy new toilets and the nice nice lady at the plumbing supply house tossed in some Plain Jane seats for free. Well, you get what you pay for, the thin paint on the seats has allowed moisture to enter the wood and the undersides were starting to get ugly.

We went to Lowes the other day to buy new seats. There before us stood the giant wall of toilet seats ranging in price from $20 to $80. We eliminated half instantly because we needed oblong not round. Half again were eliminated when we dismissed ones costing more the $35. We further cut the nominees half again because they were painted wood. In the end we opted for the $20 one because it had the flatter top and touted it self as anti-bacterial or anti-fungal or anti-something.

To top it off, it is slow closing. Twenty bucks and it lowers itself slowly and magically down once you give it a gentle push. Isn’t modern science wonderful?