Dr. Chu told him to strip, and kneel on the floor. Puzzled? My friends did what he was told. The the doctor asked him to crawl towards the wall, turn around and crawl back. He did this and as you might imagine was quite puzzled. The doctor had him do this a couple more times and told him to get dressed. 

They returned to the doctors office and desk and the doctor finally plucked up the courage to tell Jim that he was suffering from Zachary Rike Disease. Jim asked, “What the heck is Zachary Rike Disease?” Dr. Chu told him that he had a very special condition (say this out loud) “Your face looks zachary rike your ass!”

Zachary Rike Disease is a post from: Chris Cane's Blog

After watching Tiger Woods yesterday on TV I realize that I too should apologize for some of my actions over the last year.

Over the past year I realize how much I have offended some people because I have forwarded some inappropriate pictures and jokes to friends who I thought shared the same sense of humor, or that they had friends who would enjoy being forwarded said same piece.

Unfortunately this wasn’t the case and I seem to have upset quite a few people who have accused me of being sexist, crude and shallow.  If you were one of these people, please accept my sincerest apologies.

From now on I will only post or send e-mails with a cultural or educational content – such as classical art and architecture, nature and other interesting topics.  Below is a picture of the Pont Neuf Bridge in Paris .

It is the oldest bridge in Paris and took 26 years to build.It was completed in 1604.

Damn! Where did she come from?

My Annual Apology – Thanks Tiger Woods! is a post from: Chris Cane's Blog

I was being driven across the German countryside by a good friend named Klaus Wenske. Klaus knows that I like German sausage, and many times he would introduce me to a new wurst. Germany has the best wurst. That day it was Bockwurst. We stopped for lunch at a roadside diner and enjoyed some Bockwurst on a bun with mustard. It was great lunch which included a Bock Beer. I asked Klaus if Bock Beer and Bockwurst had the same origins. He was not sure. He explained that the Bock Beer got its name from the male deer with antlers on the bottle (we say Buck and they say Bock).

He tried several times to come up with plausible explanations for Bockwurst but none was completely believable as he told them without conviction. I guess I chided him a little too much because in a fit of frustration he looked at me and said “I don’t know where the name Bockwurst comes from. Where does the word ‘marshmallow’ come from?” This was a great question as I had no idea. Not to be outdone I grabbed his cell phone and called Peter Reinhard a friend of mine in the USA who knows everything. I was surprised when the question of the origin of the word marshmallow stumped Peter. At home Peter has a great collection of dictionaries and he phoned Margrit, his wife, who looked it up. Now I was prepared! I learned that it is “a confection of sweetened paste, formerly made from the root of the marshmallow plant.” and also learned that it is “a perennial plant (Althaea officinalis) native to Europe and naturalized in marshes of eastern North America, having showy pink flowers and a mucilaginous root occasionally used in confectionery”.

I shared this deep knowledge of the “root” of the word marshmallow with Klaus and asked the question again, “Where does the name Bockwurst come from?”

Klaus still has not told me!

Do you know where Bockwurst comes from? is a post from: Chris Cane's Blog

For this story, it was circa 1984 and we living in Salt Lake City. I had transferred within Varian to become their product manager for power grid tubes at the Eimac division in Salt Lake. Our new home, well new to us came with cable TV with several premium channels including HBO. It was kind of comical because in "those days" the control of which channels were visible in the home were determined by which traps and filters were installed by the cable installer. Since the advent of digital cable, those days are far behind us. The previous owner of our home must have paid for several premium channels and the cable TV company had not come out and changed the installation. We received several premium channels. The comical thing was that every few months during the years we lived in Salt Lake, the cable company would call and ask us if we wanted to "upgrade" our cable service and get some premium channels. We of course graciously declined their kind offers. We felt that paying for an upgrade would degrade our service.

I'm digressing again. It's always necessary to "set the scene" as the whole point of this posting is the scary movie. Poltergeist was on HBO and Cheryl and I sat down to watch it one evening, our kids Amy and Jody (about 9 and 7) at the time were in the room and we felt that Poltergeist was inappropriate for them to watch. We asked them to go to their room(s) so we could watch the movie. The kids said, "We watched Poltergeist this morning." We gave them free access to the TV and did not control what they watched very well. Poltergeist had been playing for a few days and the kids had watched it that morning while mum and dad were either napping or simply involved in making breakfast, painting a wall, training the dog or any such thing that did not involve supervising our kids. We or perhaps they are indeed very lucky that they turned out so well.

Sorry, I'm digressing again. As the kids said that they had already watched the film, we allowed them to stay in the room. Those of you who remember Poltergeist will remember the classic scene where the evil tree breaks through the window in the kids room. As this scene begins on TV, Jody, our seven year old was cuddled up with mom and said "Don't watch this part mum, it's really scary."

For those of you who'd like to see the scene and perhaps re-live the moment. I did find the scene on YouTube.

Poltergeist -- The Scary Movie -- A family true story! is a post from: Chris Cane's Blog

A friend in Israel sent this video to me! It truly is remarkable.

Is it your time to die? This guy lives to see another day! is a post from: Chris Cane's Blog

The solution is at the bottom of the post!

Which do you prefer?

I'm told that all of these outfits are available at Wal-Mart

Happy Shopping!

Tough Tough Choices – Which do you prefer? is a post from: Chris Cane's Blog

We were on our way to a conference in LA associated with our home business. Let me set the scene, we arrive at a campsite outside Rapid City, South Dakota, near Mount Rushmore late one afternoon. We need to catch up on emails and phone calls as we travel with our business www.amjo.net with us at all times. One can not escape from a home based business when you're oxymoronically on the road. Our cell phones had no connectivity and neither did our laptop via it's T-Mobile modem so I un-hitched the Mini Cooper and headed to town to buy a telephone that I could plug in to the camp-site provided phone line. Cheryl remained at the motor home with Mini, Cooper and Bugsy, our three pugs. I return to the campsite, phone in hand, I quickly re-hitch the Mini-Cooper so we could have a quick get-a-way the next morning. All was well, we retrieved our phone messages, hooked up our laptop via phone modem and our day was complete.

The next morning arrived and we departed the campsite on our way to see Mount Rushmore, a few miles down the road. Unfortunately we did not manage to get more than a mile from the campsite before one heard screeching tires behind our motor home. I check the rear view mirror and rearview camera and see smoke rising from the front of the Mini. The engine had seized and many four letter expletive deleted words and phrases were uttered as I stopped the motor home and went to check on the Mini.

The picture is bad. I had left the Mini in reverse gear the night before and things like connecting rods and pistons were hanging around outside of the engine. Not a pretty site! The only good thing was that with some effort I was able to get the Mini in neutral so we could tow it. Were were about to tow a dead Mini around for a while!

We learn that the nearest Mini dealer is in Salt Lake City about 800 miles away. We gather our wits, do a drive-by shooting with a camera of Mount Rushmore and head to Salt Lake City. It was late may or early June and we were pleased that we got to drive through a snow storm in Wyoming. The weather was bad enough that we stopped at a KOA outside Rawlings Wyoming.

I called Farmer's Insurance to tell them of our plight and they were kind enough to tell us that no insurance coverage would be available. We did not know then that the engine and super-charger were going to cost about $10,000.00 to be replaced.

Well we arrived without further incident at Salt Lake, dropped off the Mini for a repair estimate and headed for a KOA in Salt Lake City. The next day we dropped into Murray BMW and learned that the repair was going to be $9500.00 plus or minus a few pennies. This prompted another call to Farmer's Insurance to learn that we still were not going to get a dime from the insurance company.

We began our trip to Los Angeles, remember the part about us going to LA for a conference. I don't recall where we stopped between Salt Lake and LA but there was a TV station nearby and we truned on the TV to take our minds off the poor little broken Mini and our emptying bank account. As we're watching TV, a Farmer's Insurance commercial comes on screen. The commercial showed a man getting out of his red shiny convertible at the edge of a cliff. He gets out of his car to chat with someone who has walked over to admire his bright red dream car and he leans on the trunk. He had not set the emergency brake or left it in gear and his action caused the car to start rolling and exit the picture as it plunges over the cliff, the voice-over said "You're covered".

This prompted another call to Farmer's Insurance and I recounted the tale of the commercial that I'd seen on TV the night before and stating clearly to them that what I had done by leaving my car in gear was not as dumb as the fool in their commercial who had not left his car in gear and pushed it over the cliff! A couple of supervisors later, agreement was reached that they would cover the enging replacement. We never have seen that commercial again!

The rest of the trip was not without incident but that's enough writing for now!

Do you have a store to tell?

PS: Towing a Mini does not cause the odometer to rack up mileage. This car when we sold it a year later had about 50,000 miles on the chassis, 18,000 miles on the first engine and only 12,000 miles on the second engine and yes we fully disclosed this to the buyer!

Towing a Mini Cooper – Good idea? – Sure! Why not? is a post from: Chris Cane's Blog

I am digressing from my quest to determine if you wear a toboggan? I grew up as a British born Canadian now living in the USA. In Canada and England (to the best of my knowledge), a toboggan is something that you sit or lay on in the winter months and slide downhill. I grew up going downhill on toboggans in the wintertime.

Confusion broke out when I read Jody’s paper and chatted with some of her friends. In south eastern Ohio and south western West Virginia a toboggan is a hat! It’s the kind of hat that in most of Canada is called a touque (pronounced ‘tuke’ by most folks) and is a woolen hat. Bob and Doug McKenzie were always wearing touques eh!.

So the word toboggan has at least two meanings. Which one do you use? Perhaps the word toboggan has a different meaning for you. I know that when I was doing some googling to find toboggan images that the word ‘touque’ is also slang for foreskin but I’ll leave that for another day.

I look forward to a few comments!

Do you wear a toboggan? is a post from: Chris Cane's Blog

Good fences make good neighbors, or so they say. We moved into a brand new subdivision in 1974, and that summer I organized a “fencing party” on our side of the street. We had the owners of about 10 homes over at our house one Saturday afternoon in the spring. The homes were all in one row on one side of the street. They backed onto a well established subdivision that had been built thirty or so years earlier. We discussed the need for fencing between our homes as some of us had dogs, some had children, etc. We discussed the advantages of wood vs. chain link, and we broke into committees with a plan to get back together the next week after researching costs and material choices, etc. The decision was made that we would build a cedar fence with horizontal planks alternating from post to post. There were one or two abstainers who got fences anyway as we were to build ours around them. Materials were purchased by the group and work began. The toughest weekend was the first where we mixed cement, cut posts, rented a motorized post hole auger, and about six or seven of us installed 160 four by four cedar fence posts. What an exhausting job that was!

A block or two away a similar group was building fences also, and they, like us, had formed committees, bought as a group and shared the work of installing their fences. They had chosen vertical cedar and they completed  their efforts, like us, by early summer. The Good Neighbor story is really about one of the families in that group. One of the abstainers in their group ended up being fenced in on three sides for free by his neighbors. There was a lot of grumbling and mumbling but his fence was free. He did build two small lengths of fence with gates from the sides of his home out to his free fence.

Things started to heat up when the freeloading neighbor put a pool in his yard. Bylaws in our town required that pools must be fenced. He bought and installed his pool inside his free fence. Imagine the grumbling and the mumbling now as each day went by and one could see and hear them enjoying their pool inside their free fence. The pool guy might have at least tried to invite neighbors into his pool. I suspect that none would have taken him up on an invitation, but an effort like that might have spared him a lot of work.

The neighborhood had a party one Saturday night. The pool guy was not invited. The party was at one of the homes adjoining Mr. PoolGuy’s home.Alcohol was being consumed and the grumbling and the mumbling turned into louder mumbling and grumbling until one of them said, “I think we should take our fences down!” and they did, at one or two in the morning,. Out came the hammers and nail pullers and about an hour later, there was a pool in Mr. PoolGuy’s yard with no fence.

Mr. PoolGuy had to take the next few days off work building a fence around his pool while the neighbors watched. With his job finally complete, he listed his house and moved out by the fall.

The new neighbors with the pool had everyone over for pool parties the next year. I guess good fences make good neighbors, eventually.

Good Fences make Good Neighbors! is a post from: Chris Cane's Blog

19 THINGS IT TOOK ME 50 YEARS TO LEARN

1. Never under any circumstances take a sleeping pill and a laxative on the same night.
2. If you had to identify in one word the reason why the human race has not achieved,       and  never will achieve its full potential, that word would be “meetings.”
3. There is a very fine line between “hobby” and “mental illness”.
4. People who want to share their religious views with you almost never want you to share yours with them.
5. And when God, who created the entire universe with all of its glories, decides to deliver a message to humanity, He WILL NOT use, as His messenger, a person  on cable TV with a bad hairstyle.
6. You should not confuse your career with your life.
7. No matter what happens, somebody will find a way to take it too seriously.
8. When trouble arises and things look bad, there is always one individual who perceives a solution and is willing to take command. Very often, that individual is crazy.
9. Nobody cares if you can’t dance well. Just get up and dance.
10. Never lick a steak knife.
11. Take out the fortune before you eat the cookie.
12. The most powerful force in the universe is gossip.
13. You will never find anybody who can give you a clear and compelling reason why we observe daylight savings time.
14. Never say anything to a woman that even remotely suggests that you think she’s pregnant unless you can see an actual baby emerging from her at that moment.
15. There comes a time when you should stop expecting other people to make a big deal about your birthday. That time is age eleven.
16. The one thing that unites all human beings,regardless of age, gender, religion, economic status or ethnic background, is that, deep down inside, we ALL believe that we are above-average drivers.
17. The main accomplishment of almost all organized protests is to annoy people who are not in them.
18. A person who is nice to you, but rude to the waiter, is not a nice person.
19. Your friends love you anyway.

19 Things it took me 50 years to learn. is a post from: Chris Cane's Blog