If you’re wondering about these phrases, they’re anagrams of my name, “Bloggard”.

I also ran my full name (“Arthur Cronos”), and came up with 21,000 lines of anagrams, mostly awful, but lots of good ones, like “Our Car’s Thorn”, “Roast or Churn”, “Short Rancour”, “Torn Cars Hour”, “Oars Torch Urn”, “Raunch Rotors”, and “Honor Car Rust.”

In fact, I’ve made a little poem. Each line is an anagram of “Arthur Cronos,” kind of a testament to narcissism, and having too much time on one’s hands. Hope you like it …

CORN ART HOURS
A CRUST OR HORN
RAN TO CHURROS
OR HURT AS CORN

NO CHURROS ART
CURT SHORN OAR
ORTHO CAR RUNS
CARS HORN TOUR

CUR OR RAT NOSH
RAT SCORN HOUR
RANT OH CURSOR
ARCH TORN SOUR

SUN CAT HORROR
TRASH OUR CORN
ORATORS CHURN
SOUR CAR THORN

CORN HUTS ROAR
CAR HOUR SNORT
CASH RUN ROTOR
OH RUN CAR SORT

A CHURROS TORN
OR CARS RUN HOT
OUR SHORT NARC
CAN RUSH OR ROT

TORN HOUR SCAR
CARS HONOR RUT
NO CARROT RUSH
CANT HORROR US

ROT ON RASH CUR
ROAR CUTS HORN
RANCOR HURT SO
CURATOR SHORN

There, now. I did it, and I’m not sorry. Every single line an anagram of “Arthur Cronos”, haw!

Probably now you want to see what anagrams are lurking in your name, hmmmm?

OK, ok, I’ll spill all.

Go to the Anagram Server, at WordSmith.Org.

[THIS JUST IN]

Mr. Wang Qin
HanG Seng Bank LTD.
Des Voeux RD. Branch
Central Hong Kong, Honk Kong. [HONK?]

Good day,

Let me start by introducing myself. I am Mr. Wang Qin credit officer of the Hang Seng Bank Ltd. I have a concealed business suggestion for
you.

[VERY LARGE AMOUNT OF MONEY]
Before the U.S and Iraqi war our client General. Ibrahim Moussa who was with the Iraqi forces and also business man made a numbered fixed deposit for 18 calendar months, with a value of Twenty millions Five Hundred Thousand United State Dollars only in my branch. Upon maturity several notice was sent to him, even during the war early this
year.

[NO ANSWER ON THE PHONE]
Again after the war another notification was sent and still no response came from him. We later find out that the General and his family had been killed during the war in bomb blast that hit their
home.

[MONEY JUST LYING AROUND]
After further investigation it was also discovered that Gen. Ibrahim Moussa did not declare any next of kin in his official papers including the paper work of his bank deposit. And he also confided in me the last time he was at my office that no one except me knew of his deposit in my bank. So, Twenty millions Five Hundred Thousand United State Dollars is still lying in my bank and no one will ever come forward to claim
it.

[MY VIEWS ABOUT THE GUBBAMINT]
What bothers me most is that according to the to the laws of my country at the expiration 3 years the funds will revert to the ownership of the Hong Kong Government if nobody applies to claim the
funds.

[YOU LOOK LIKE MOUSSA TO ME]
Against this backdrop, my suggestion to you is that I will like you as a foreigner to stand as the next of kin to Gen. Ibrahim Moussa so that you will be able to receive his
funds.

[I’VE GOT A LAWYER. TRUST ME.]
I want you to know that I have had everything planned out so that we shall come out successful. I have contacted an attorney that will prepare the necessary document that will back you up as the next of kin to Gen. Ibrahim Moussa, all that is required from you at this stage is for you to provide me with your Full Names and Address so that the attorney can commence his
job.

[WELCOME TO THE MOUSSA FAMILY!]
After you have been made the next of kin, the attorney will also fill in for claims on your behalf and secure the necessary approval and letter of probate in your favor for the move of the funds to an account that will be provided by
you.

[RISK-FREE]
There is no risk involved at all in the matter as we are going adopt a legalized method and the attorney will prepare all the necessary documents. Please endeavor to observe utmost discretion in all matters concerning this
issue.

[YOU ONLY GET 25%]
Once the funds have been transferred to your nominated bank account we shall share in the ratio of 70% for me, 25% for you and 5% for any expenses incurred during the course of this
operation.

[ACT NOW!]
Should you be interested please send me your private phone and fax numbers for easy communication and I will provide you with more details of this
operation.

[IN OUR BANK, WE LIKE TO USE FREESERVE EMAIL]
p.s REPLY ME AT; wang_q7@fsmail.net

[KISS ME, YOU FOOL]
Your earliest response to this letter will be appreciated.

[YOUR PALSY-WALSY]
Kind Regards
Mr. Wang Qin

What happened this week back in 1850?

California became a state.
The state had no electricity.
The state had no money.
Almost everyone spoke Spanish.
There were gun fights in the streets.

So basically, it was much like California today, only the women had real breasts.

San Diego Hilton, 1984: I had learned it a few years earlier, from Polaris the Magnificent, who was a performing magician.

Polaris, dressed in a longish purple robe and a tall, conical hat, stood upon the flat stage at the Ghiradelli Chocolate Factory mall, outside on a warm Spring day, and there he mystified young children, and the rest of us.

I set my helmet down on the bench, and watched the show. The motorcycle was safe enough, chained to a parking meter nearby. I figured that if somebody was strong enough to lift the moto above the parking meter, they deserved to steal it, so I relaxed and that Polaris was really great.

And afterward somehow we struck up a conversation, as he was packing up his magicabelia, and later we met some buddy of his at a Mission Street tacqueria, and while sitting around the table over beers, the buddy said “Show him the bubbles.”

Polaris the Magnificent, with a knowing glance, tapped the side of his nose and then produced from his battered knapsack a bottle of common bubble-fluid, a small plastic ring for blowing bubbles, and a couple of plastic straws of different sizes.

And there on the table at La Chomperia, he created assemblies of bubbles that boggled the mind.

The thing was to blow bubbles inside of other bubbles, and to blow bubbles adjoining other bubbles. If their relative sizes were just right, then at the place where they touched each other, they’d form a flat plane. That is, if you had two bubbles of similar size and you could suspend both of them on two wetted straws, then where the two bubbles touched each other would be a flat common boundary.

The effect of two bubbles is interesting, I suppose, but the wonder comes when you assemble three or four or more bubbles. In some cases, you can create geometrical shapes between the bubbles: shapes like a pyramid, a square, and others.

Amazed and marvelling over another beer, I finally bid Polaris the Magnificent and the buddy a fond fairwell, and motored off to some other adventure, and never saw them again in this lifetime. Ah, but the memory remained.

And thus it was, some years later that, married and attending a trade-association convention in San Diego, that Polaris the Magnificent brought me fame and fortune.

The answering service industry has a surprising number of large people. Maybe it’s different now. But then it was startling to see so many overweight owners of answering services. Perhaps because it is a business where you sit all day, talking on the phone?

And at that convention it happened that after the big dinner on the final night, when my then-wife Lori and I entered the dance contest, performing the jitterbug which we’d learned from Oz at the Avenue Ballroom, we won. I not sure it was our skill; it may have just been the comparison with the other, more ponderous dancers. Or maybe we just did well that night. Later, we fell out over the jitterbug, but that’s another story. That night, we shone, and we won.

The prize was an electronic box called a “Call-Diverter”, which we used in our business, and it was worth about $200, so that was a swell prize.

And then they announced the Bubble Contest.

Boy, was I prepared!

As everybody else tried to think of something to do that would make their bubble look different from any other bubble in the room, I begged two tiny cocktail straws from folks at our table, then soaped a clean bread plate.

With just a bit of knitting my brows in recollection, I was able to assemble three bubbles so that a pyramid was formed between the three. Amazing! Mirableu!

I won the contest handily, and standing before the crowd and the admiring eyes of my wife, I happily accepted the prize which was $100 and another Call-Diverter device. But as I stood before the laughing crowd, who clapped madly, a guy from the back yelled out. “No fair! No fair!” he called, “He cheated!”

In a flash, I knew just how to respond. I held up the plastic straws for all to see, and yelled back.

“Whadda ya mean?” I said, “Just standard bubble tools.”

WEBLOG wannabe 2004 weblog award awarded to Bloggard in the category of “Best Teeny-Weeny Stories”

Do you like this award? All of us here at me are very excited, and we’d like to thank the acadamy, and my mother, and our lord and- Oh, wait. Hold on a minute. Let’s start over …

Do you like this award? You do? That’s swell. Because you too can have a nice award, courtesy of that CSS-maven Ms. Firda Beka, who lives far away. To claim your award, just visit one of her pretty sites, specifically this one:

Award-O-Matic

Montpelier, Vermont: Bob Keeshan, Captain Kangaroo on television, died at 76. The show, consisting of visits with puppets like Mr. Moose telling knock-knock jokes (shown here), won several awards and was wildly popular with children. As a young man, I kind of liked him, too. Just a throw-back, I suppose.

The Captain did the same thing every day. Sporting a Beatles haircut and large moustache, and wearing what appeared to be an English bus-driver’s uniform whose huge pockets were filled with unexpected objects, he puttered around in the “Treasure House”, chatting with the puppets and Mr. Green Jeans, an eternally unemployed neighbor.

It strikes me now that Captain Kangaroo was very lucky to have Mr. Green Jeans as a neighbor, because most folks wouldn’t be able to visit every single day like that.

Once the Captain was selling something, some kind of “Fun Kit”, consisting of scissors and glue and crayons, and my little brother George wanted one.

Christmas was fast approaching, and that gave me an idea.

In my low teens, and eternally short on cash due to having spent it, I realized that I could make a Fun Kit for George. It would have all the right stuff inside, because the Captain had spelled it out on TV.

I found a box and decorated it. In the box I put scissors, glue, crayons, and some other things as were proper. I wrapped it up and waited. That Christmas was spent at my grandmother’s house, and it was there that George opened his present. He scowled.

“That’s not a Fun Kit,” he said.

Bummer.

I sulked and sulked, but all was not lost, as it turned out, because George had an insistant habit of shaking Christmas presents, trying to puzzle them out by sound.

And therefore, to enhance the Fun Kit, I’d found a burned-out light bulb, and packing the Fun Kit tightly so it would make no sound, I had included the lightbulb near the surface. As expected, right up until Christmas day, George had shaken the package every day, but it only made the small tinkling sound that you’d expect from a burned-out light bulb. “What is it?” George had asked, again and again, “What is it?“

I would smile and say that it was a light bulb.

“No, no!” he’d cry, “What is it?” And it turned out that, although the Fun Kit was a dismal flop, the light bulb became a great hit in our family, and we gave each other light bulbs at Christmas-time for many years to come.

So I guess I owe you after all, Captain Kangaroo. Thanks for the light bulbs.

…

An ex-marine, the Captain first appeared on TV as Clarabell the Clown on Howdy Doody. Along with (now deceased) Mister Rogers, the Captain deplored the modern direction of TV for children, citing violence and vengeance as extreme and unhealthy. Even though I like fight-em-up movies, I’d have to agree with the Captain.

“Play is the work of children,” he said, “It’s very serious stuff. And if it’s properly structured in a developmental program, children can blossom.”

His wife had died in 1990. Probably he missed her. Perhaps he’s seeing her again. Perhaps he is peaceful.

A poor man visited the well-to-do Judge and Mayor of their village, and asked to borrow the Mayor’s donkey. The Mayor frowned.

“I’m so sorry,” said the Mayor. “I’ve loaned my donkey to my nephew Thomas.”

Just then the donkey, out behind the house, brayed loudly, and the poor man looked up.

“But I hear the donkey outside!” he said.

“Who are you going to believe?” asked the Mayor. “Me, or my donkey?”