Department of Tele-Annoyance: Robo-Calls from 419-318-1970

Over the past few days my landline has been ringing incessantly with telephone calls from a Sylvania, OH number. The number in question is 419-318-1970, and the calls contain a recorded message asking for participation in a political survey related to the November election.

The calls have been coming in at all sorts of hours, ranging from as early as 9:11 AM and as late as 8:56 PM. By my estimation the obnoxious idiots who programmed this robo-call operation have sent at least seven calls to my house over the last three days, and the number may be higher if some of the calls did not get recorded on the caller ID device (I sometimes pick up faster than the machine can recognize an incoming call).

The tele-bastards also seem to have a sixth sense for when I am trying to concentrate on writing or grading. Quite a few of these calls have disrupted me in the middle of something that requires the full usage of my already dubious intellectual powers, resulting in a flurry of expletives from me as I see that the asshats are calling again.

To the tele-imbeciles who annoy me: I am a firm believer in karma, and I have little doubt that your incessant pestering of private phone lines is going to bring about a heavy downpour of negative karma upon your heads.

In the meantime: go away. Now.

Rapid Rhetoric: WITENAGEMOT

This is an irregular feature - both in frequency and oddness - dedicated to a word or phrase I came across that I have never previously used.

witenagemot (WIH-ten-EYE-yah-moat) n. a political body in Anglo-Saxon England that operated from approximately the late 6th century through the 11th century.

The term witenagemot is derived from the Old English phrase ƿitena ȝemōt ("meeting of wise men"). The witenagemot was an assembly of social and political elites served in an advisory role to the king. Members of the witenagemot were known as "witans," and the assembled group lacked the power to create legislation.

The king called the witenagemot as he saw fit, and the assembly possessed at most limited authority, ultimately answering to the monarchy. Weaker kings sometimes relied more heavily on the advice of the witenagemot, while more powerful kings called the assembly infrequently or even disregarded the advice of the witans. I suspect that the witans had little interest in life insurance without medical questions, either, but this is altogether another topic.

I possessed a fuzzy notion of the origin of the term prior to this afternoon, when I came across a reference to the witenagemot in the 1913 text The Constitutional History of England in its Origin and Development. Now, to form my own witenagemot, as I seek solutions to the male canines in my home who have recently engaged in nefarious behavior involving leg-lifting and a certain kitchen chair.

On the Tragic Death of Bradley A. Hammer

I read with a mixture of sadness and anger that Allen Township resident Bradley A. Hammer died in a shooting accident Monday. The incident occurred while Hammer was "teaching his son how to shoot when the .22-caliber rifle discharged," according to the Toledo Blade.

This is of course an unbelievable tragedy for the Hammer family, but I have to ask the question: what the hell was Bradley Hammer thinking when he came upon the dubious idea of placing a loaded rifle in the hands of his 7-year-old son?

Now, I am a firm supporter of the Second Amendment, and I understand that in rural Ohio folks place a high degree of cultural importance to the skills associated with gun ownership. However, I find ludicrous the idea that a 7-year-old child should have a need to begin using lethal firearms.

Talking to your child about gun safety? Sure. Demonstrating how a weapon operates and building a healthy respect for firearms? I'm all for it. But handing over a loaded weapon to a small child? Utterly irresponsible, and in this case, deadly.

Now the family is without a husband and father, and now Hammer's 7-year-old son gets to carry around a lifetime of guilt knowing that he killed his own father. I do not know the model of .22-caliber rifle that was used, but I have to think that the rifle was about as long as the child is tall. In addition, no one can convince me that a 7-year-old is anywhere near mature enough to be wielding a deadly weapon, even with parental supervision, though I suppose there are plenty of people who would disagree. Yet a better question is whether Bradley Hammer was qualified to teach his child to properly handle a weapon, and based upon the fatal outcome, my suspicion is that the answer to this question is an emphatic "no."

Red Admiral

Pictured on your left is an example of the butterfly known to the scientific world as Vanessa indica. In the United States this butterfly is known as the Asian Admiral, while in other parts of the world folks sometimes call this insect the Indian Red Admiral. I noticed the butterfly while watering some plants, and it cheerfully cooperated while I went inside to fetch my camera from atop a piece of my home office furniture.

I am a million miles away from being a lepidopterologist, and I found the website Butterflies and Moths of North America to be very user-friendly and informative in my quest to identify this butterfly. Once I narrowed down the search to butterflies in the general popular category of "Red Admiral," I could then determine which of these butterflies my friend really was.

Update: Upon further research I think that this variety of Red Admiral is actually Vanessa atalanta. The telling piece of evidence for my opinion is the presence of the four small triangular markings at the base of the butterfly's hindwings.

Porcello Sharp in Loss by Mud Hens

Pictured on your left is Rick Porcello, and he is wearing a Hawaiian-themed baseball uniform in conjunction with a Toledo Mud Hens promotion. Porcello pitched seven shutout innings tonight, but unfortunately closer Jay Sborz coughed up a three-run homer to Jonathan VanEvery of the Indianapolis Indians in the ninth, and the Hens lost by a score of 3-1. This is kind of like winding up with a case of eczema after having a great time at prom, but I digress.

My wife and I attended tonight's game along with my parents and my brother and sister-in-law from the Detroit area. The capacity crowd of 10,300 was silenced by VanEvery's blast, which traveled about 420 feet in left-center.

Porcello looked like a true phenom in 2009, when he went 14-8 for the Tigers and finished third in the voting for American League Rookie of the Year. He started 2010 off in rough fashion, posting a 4–7 record and a whopping 6.14 ERA. Since joining the Mud Hens Porcello has a record of 1-2 and an ERA of 3.21 in four starts, so perhaps the trip to Toledo has helped him work out the mechanical problems that seemed to plague him in Detroit. Porcello's outing is also impressive given the fact that the Indians are one of the better hitting teams in the International League.

Porcello allowed only six hits and gave up three walks in seven innings, while racking up seven strikeouts in his strong outing.

On Human Hopes and Inevitable Storms

Pictured on your left is the intersection of Talmadge and Sylvania in West Toledo, and the image was taken about 6:00 pm this evening. My wife and I were on our way to Jazz in the Garden, a summertime favorite of ours each year.

I had been watching the weather radar most of the afternoon to see if it looked like we could still make the event, and the news just kept getting more grim. Yet my wife in her infinite optimism continued packing the picnic meal, and she insisted that the storm would "blow over" even with the ominous clouds building as we headed out.

I just asked if she was packing umbrellas, because I had little doubt that we would be getting soaked.

Yet it was hard to stay irritated at her, even though I knew we were sure to be facing a washout. Even the sight of lightning and the rumble of thunder did not deter her faith that the storm would pass, and though I was correct that we would receive a heavy downpour that would cancel our plans (the concert went on as scheduled in a conference building, but we went back home to eat) I still observed the power of faith and positive thinking in action.

But did I mention I was right? That makes about eight times this year, a new record for me.

The Year's First Sunflower

In keeping with the early start to the 2010 growing season around these parts, I was not surprised to see that some of my sunflowers have started blooming. Typically I think of sunflowers as a late July or early August phenomenon, but some of my red sunflowers decided that an early July bloom would be fine by their horticultural clocks.

In this image the sunflower head looks large, but in reality this is a smallish flower with a diameter of about 10 inches. Still, the burnt-orange and reddish hues make for contrast with some of the brighter lilies and roses nearby, and I am sure the neighborhood finches will be feasting on this flower when they spot it, provided that the birds are not too busy with unexpected delays, such as researching the best testosterone cream.

It should not be a surprise that a plant with the word "sun" in its name thrives in full sun, and this sunflower is no exception. It receives sun from about 9:00 AM to dusk, and it has locked onto the morning sun when it finished its heliotropic dance.

Red Poppies

In a previous post I ruminated on the planting of some red poppy seeds I harvested from a patch of red poppies that I noticed growing at my 93-year-old grandfather's house last year. Several weeks have passed, yet the brilliant red poppies continue to provide a colorful display in my yard, and they appear to have at least another week left of color.

There is an interesting contradiction in the red poppy, a flower associated with wartime death whose long lasting and vibrant colors simultaneously remind us of life. I spent a few minutes in the searing 96-degree heat today gazing at my small patch of poppies, in sublime awe at their beauty and stamina. On a day when many of my flowers seemed parched and wilting, the poppies continued to blaze away in their scarlet glory, almost oblivious to the heat.

I plan to harvest even more of the seeds of these beautiful flowers this summer, and I envision a sea of red in my yard next June and July.

Double Petal Ditch Lily

Regular readers of this blog know my fascination with the common plant known by the scientific name of Hemerocallis fulva. Around these parts these lilies are known as either "tiger lilies" or "ditch lilies," depending I suppose on the mindset of the gardener.

Pictured on your left is a variety of the common tiger lily that appeared a few years ago in my yard. The blossoms have twice as many petals as a regular tiger lily, and there is a frilly edge to the petals that is more eye-catching than those found on standard tiger lilies. The flowers also boast a bright red streaking in the petals, giving these lilies even more aesthetic appeal.

These double petal lilies begin to bloom a few weeks after the rest of my tiger lilies appear, which in this year was on June 9. I am not sure if this type of lily is a separate species or just a variant on the strain, but I put most of my thought into simply appreciating their beauty.

Giant Lilies Redux

The giant lilies I blogged about last week are now in full bloom, so I decided to take a few more pictures and brag about them again. I think I spent about $10 on two pots of these strangely prolific plants, and we will be rewarded with brilliant magenta hues that will last about three weeks.

As I mentioned in the last post, one of the most surprising characteristics of these giant lilies is the thickness of their stalks. These resemble the sorts of trunk-like stalks that support sunflowers, and I estimate that the average diameter of the stalks - which look like the horticultural equivalent of a human being taking HGH supplements - is about an inch-and-a-half.

If these giant lilies continue to spread, we will have to split them and start new groups elsewhere in the yard. As it stands they are already crowding out some of the other perennials I have planted in this particular garden, and while I appreciate their beauty, I like a little variety in the garden's colors.

Buried Marble

While excavating some turf from my lawn today in order to create a future garden, I dug up an old marble. I paused to reflect upon the years in which the marble remained underground, and I wondered how long the spherical toy was buried in my yard. I estimate that the marble was 10-12 inches below ground when I discovered it.


The marble is glass, and its turquoise coloring is punctuated by waves of a deeper bluish hue. There is pitting on the surface that suggests the glass has been exposed at least a few decades of corrosive substances in the soil, though much of the marble's luster still remains despite the soil's efforts to cause a change in marble mass akin to that produced by human weight loss supplements.

I cannot recall any of my children playing with marbles, though of course I have no idea of knowing if they came across any in their travels. The marble is unique enough to lead me to believe it was not mass produced for a board game, though it is possible that the wavy colorforms may have been produced by the outdoor environment (I am not a marblologist).

So if you lost an aquamarine marble 30 years ago in West Toledo, call me: it is still worthy of play.

New Hammock

One of my favorite pastimes (and one I unfortunately do not make enough effort to do) is to kick back and relax in the hammock. This afternoon my trusty old hammock finally bit the proverbial dust, and we ventured out to procure a new hammock.

My wife, every the savvy shopper, located a two-person hammock at one of the local department stores, and we also invested in a new support system to replace the weathered synthetic marine mooring lines we hoisted up some years ago. The new setup ran about $100, and I had to promise to put the hammock away after summer.

Joining me on the new hammock is Shadow, a terrier mix that we were fostering with Planned Pethood. After about four months and only one application (not a good match), we ended up adopting Shadow ourselves. He is a smart, loyal, and friendly little guy who integrated himself so completely into our house that we couldn't imagine him living anywhere else.

The mosquitoes finally drove us from our hanging reverie, but we will be spending at least an hour or two on the hammock this holiday weekend, while I will be spending zero time contemplating the best eye cream for dark circles.