Free Range Brain

  In keeping with my desire to write more, sometimes you'll get a nonsensical post... Like now! A variation of a few things that don't constitute a full page but in my mind, deserve some brain activity.

(Meant as humor so Tree Huggers, Green Peacers & anyone named Sunflower just relax & enjoy the Peyote)

1) In a public restroom the other day during a pit stop for work, I do my business, wash (or warch if you're from Ohio) my hands, then go to the automatic hand dryer to complete the process. As I am drying my hands, I'm reading the top of the dryer and I see (in summary)

• Name: Clean Planet
• Fine Print: Helping to keep our environment fresh, clean & abundantly strong by saving the deforestation of trees to make paper towels.
• My Mental Reaction: Cool, saving trees is good.... But this thing is electric, by which fossil fuels are used to create the electricity needed to run this apparatus that allows me to dry my hands sans a towel ergo not keeping our environment "abundantly strong"

  I know, I know, you're thinking "Cool it with the rhetoric Dan, you're just taking a leak" But Hey! These are the things that keep me from going all Michael Douglas on Michael Moore. They may seem trite to you, but to me all information, however menial, is interesting. But the whole towel thing leads me right in to question two...

2) Do you ever wonder how and even why things get invented? I don't mean big things like homes, cars or illumination. That stuff was cutting edge. I'm talking about things like a violin. Not to say a violin isn't cutting edge but illumination is damn near a necessity. Someone sat down and said "Damn it's dark. If only I could see, I would be able to continue beheading these infidels & have them done by morning" Then they went ahead, killed a whale, drained it's oil, soaked a rag in it, lit it *poof* we have illumination!

  But a violin took some out there thinking. Someone, at some point had some wood, some sheep intestines and a stick. They were probably bored, drunk or both so they tied them all together and ran the stick across it and thought "Damn, that sounded pretty sweet" and hence a musical instrument was born. But unlike the illumination process above, I can't imagine that someone gutted a sheep just to see if their intestines would sound good playing Mozart. (I know the timeline is off, it's a joke) The whale oil test was no doubt a measure of scientific investigation, but I just can't see cat gut in the same light.

Hey Light! I unwittingly tied the two together!

  Anyway, now that you've all moved a few steps away from the computer, I'll rap it up by saying these are the types of things I think about when my mind is left to its own accord and I have nothing to write about. Please forward all cease and desist &/or restraining orders to my FB account and I'll see you next time for another episode of "Holy Hell Dan's Gone Nuts"