Oddly Enough Blog
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Hurry up Earl, it’s Headstand Night!
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My regular readers know that for some time I’ve been gathering information for a doctoral thesis.
It is to be an objective, scientific look at how sad and meaningless life is in places where they don’t have cable television, Blu-ray, TiVo and other entertainment necessities.
I want to monitor the impact on daily life when you can’t sit down at night and watch “Dog the Bounty Hunter,” “Ice Road Truckers” and such-like.
In the past, this research has led me to singing dingos, furniture races and a mobile sauna, to name a few diversions for the entertainmently-deprived.
Now, at a training camp in China, I may have hit rock bottom. The recruits there entertain each other with headstands. I am not making this up.
Excuse me for interrupting, Blog Guy, but why is Headstand Night more disturbing to you than a singing dingo?
Oh. Did I mention that many of the recruits are actually APPLAUDING?
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A recruit of the paramilitary police performs a headstand during a break in a training session at a military base in Suining, Sichuan province, China, January 19, 2010. REUTERS/Stringer
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I remember the Singing Dingo! One of my favorites! Woot, woot! Or, as my German Sherpherds say, “Woof, woof.”
This is actually the Dingo blog I recall so fondly: http://blogs.reuters.com/oddly-enough/20 08/10/10/toss-another-noun-on-the-noun-m ate/
Yeah Doc, that was always one of my favorites, too.
And that’s why I have so much respect for the commenter who calls herself LMR. She’s Australian, but she’s actually taught herself a few nouns.
Oh, uh, Bob, I hate to bring this up, but when do I start getting the lifetime supply of free M&Ms I was promised for writing on your blog? I’m just a little M&Mly embarrassed at the moment.
For the record, I love M&Ms, and I love making chocolate chip cookies, but I seldom make them. It takes so long to peel the M&Ms.
Doc, you’ll be interested in the new Williams-Sonoma catalog. It features a countertop M&M peeling machine. It works on all but the yellow ones.
Bandage, Charlene, Scat — where are you guys?
You know, Uncarastus, you make me wonder where my DI is. For all I know, he is a yoga instructor, has a sense of humor, and gets . . . sentimental. Well, he did have a sense of humor, as in “It’s going to be a three-legged race to the hospital, Bo. You to get your [butt] sewed up, and me to get my foot out of it.” Which he also referred to as a “Kiwi (that’s shoe polish for the unitiated) injection.”
Before bootcamp, I thought “If I got through Coach Flanagan’s football two-a-days, I can get through anything.” After bootcamp, I thought “If I got through Bootcamp, I can get through anything!”
Some of my classmates said law school was “bootcamp with books.” Hahahahahahahaha!
Ah, sweet, blessed memories!
dog the bounty hunter is the show i would watch the most ..i love that show so much…whoever dises it you got problems bra!!….i watch it every wedensday of my whole entire life.
I just had a ring of people in my front yard starring at piles of deer feces for 15 minutes, with discussion of the size of the deer (doe and faun, we concluded), how fresh it was (nightly visits for a week), etc. Our cable must really be bad hereabouts!
I don’t have ANY form of television, but whilst I think that’s a far better headstand than I could do, it doesn’t make me want to applaud. I have books though, and things to do, does that make a difference ?
No television? NO TELEVISION? You’re just kidding around with us, right?
Uncarastus is an old Jarhead, since he was a hat in the mid 70′s. I, on the other hand, am still young, as my recruit training started in ’81, and I wasn’t a hat until the late 80′s.
Semper Gumby
Oh crap. You’re telling me I’ve finally identified this blog’s demographic, and it turns out to be former U.S. Marine Corps drill instructors?
Awww, Bob – I’m touched. You have respect for me? I just thought that you put up with my presence to ensure a wide spread of your readership across the globe.
As I was in primary school, I learned about nouns and verbs and adverbs and adjecteves and participles and all that jazz. However, as I progressed through school, the education authorities decided that it was unnecessary for kids to know about all that kind of stuff. This meant that my sister (who is only two years younger than I) had to re-learn it all at university when she studied to be an English teacher and they decided to put it BACK in the curriculum (wow, that’s a big word!).
I love the government.
What’s that soldier? Drop and give me 20!
You guys serious?? US Marine Corps Drill Instructors.. man.. I have heard those terms over television… (yes, I do have one and it does form a part of my daily entertainment quota… apart from BG’s blog and Scrabble and Farmville ofcourse… )in the NCIS, CSI: NewYork, Law and Order and such…
LMR, Bob cares about you girl… have you forgotten that he KNOWS that you were unconscious over New Years when even YOU didnt know so?
Just what we needed: the Red Army has now gone into breakdancing! There’s no salvation now, people!
I’ve been to the US!! My parents used to drag us there on road trips when we was young ‘uns! Never met any drill sargeants though.
LMR, I think you’d love a movie called Oscar. Tim Curry plays a linguist and has some of the best scenes
Speaking of retirement…any day now I hope to win the EuroMillions. Ahhhh that would be the life!! I could comment on RB’s blog all day without getting interrupted by pesky work commitments!
E.
I have never been dragged to the US…. Frankly, was never really very inclined… but I think I should visit… have seen all the cuties on this side of the pond, courtesy Bob’s great fashion blogs… time I saw some American kinkies…
Are you sure it’s a headstand, and not just a way to show off his boots???
In this part of the training session we will learn the full body cavity search. Volunteers?