The Adventures of Bloggard

Been Around the Block. Got Some Stories. These are Them.

Ruru the Guru — Success at Last!

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San Francisco Yellow Pages, 1986: In the Yellow Pages that year you’d find listed “Third Ear Telepathic Answering Service” at 221-3333. If you called it you might hear this —

“Hello and thank you for calling Third Ear Telepathic Answering Service, the world’s favorite telepathic answering service. I am your Host and Operator Ruru the Guru, speaking to you direct from the Himalaya Hideaway …”

And today, May 5th of 2005, we have just obtained an excited interview with Ruru the Guru, whom we telepathed earlier today. Here’s what he had to say …

“Hello, sports fans, and a big Hmmm-baby! from the Astral Plane. I am so psyched!

“Probably you’re wondering what can get me so excital, what with being a 5th-level spirit and all, and having observed just about all of human evolution on most of the planets in this quadrant. But, I’m telling you, this is something!

“Many of you probably remember the many times, when you were feeling kind of, you know, discouraged, because your wife ran off or you didn’t get the big raise or your dog bit you? And you know how, lots of those times, you heard a little voice speaking quietly there in the back of your mind?

“And you remember how that little voice said something like how if at first you don’t succeed, then to try, try again?

“(Though, to be painfully honest, as we try to be here in the Himalaya Hideaway, of course there were other times when that little voice to heck with it and why not go get a beer.)

“Well, anyway, what I want to tell you is that, lots of those times when you heard that little voice telling you if at first you don’t succeed? Well, that was me, with a telepathic message which was sent from somebody that cares about you, most likely.

“And now, here we are in the year 2005, and it looks like what goes around also comes around!

“It looks like karma done come home to roost!

“What I’m telling you is that, all those years ago, back in San Francisco, when we paid good money month after month to run that yellow-page ad that said to call Third-Ear Telepathic Answering Service … well, today, for the first time ever … we got a telephone call. I swear to Krisna!

“And it was some attorney, off in Kentucky, calling us to inquire about buying telephone service from us!

“I mean, here it is, hardly even nineteen years after we ran that ad, and it’s still getting results! And, finally, a paying customer!

“So there you have it. Proof positive!

“Don’t ever let anybody tell you that yellow-page advertising doesn’t work!”

On This Day: Joe Bob Briggs Explains ‘Yee-HAW!’

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Mount Shasta, CA, December 31, 2006: Recently, when Adrienne was writing our Christmas cards, she asked me how to spell ‘Yee-HAW’. If you live in a foreign country and do not know, this is something that Texas people like to yell out; it connotes extreme enthusiasm. For example, in the movie Dr. Strangelove, when Slim Pickens rides the H-Bomb, he yells, “Yee-HAW! Yee-HAW! Yee-HAW!” This signifies his happiness in the moment.

Since Adrienne is from the East Coast, she didn’t know how to spell it, and so I told her. But that got me to thinking …

Where did Yee-HAW come from?

Where did ‘Yee-HAW’ come from? What is its origin? Did it come down to us through the ages, or was it just something that some cowboy yelled out one day while riding a wild horse, and somehow it caught on?

Naturally, these questions made me think of Joe Bob Briggs — the best drive-in movie reviewer in the greater Grapevine, Texas area — who is a veritable font of crucial information that we sorely need in these troubled times. If anybody would know, I reasoned, it would be Joe Bob Briggs, who is a close personal friend of mine. So I asked him.

Here is his answer …

“Yee-Haw derives from the Middle English “yee,” which became “ye” by the time of the King James Bible, a formal second-person pronoun normally used only in the singular but occasionally, when conjoined with qualifiers (“ye ungodly swine”), acceptable as an adjectival plural as part of an interjection.

“The word “Haw” was a borrowing from late 10th century Hungarian, a crude epithet used by soldiers to describe a rural imbecile (possibly a distant cousin of “harrow” or “harrower,” applied to those who till the soil, who were overwhelmingly illiterate in the Middle Ages).

“The words “yee” and “haw” were never used together until 1478, when a farrier in Long Sutton, among the eastern fens of Lincolnshire, was accosted by angry sugarbeet farmers whose draft animals had been quarantined by the Duke of Rutland upon pain of taxation necessary for the upkeep of Belvoir Castle. To defend himself from the angry mob, he quickly extracted iron bits from his furnace with a blacksmithing tong and hurled the fiery missiles at the luckless yeomen.

“When they began to scatter, the farrier execrated them with curses, including, at the point of his maximum excitement, “Yeeeeeeee Haaaaaaaawwww!” — the strict meaning of which would be something on the order of “you worthless lice-infested buffoons,” but of course given a sanguine connotation by the fact that the farrier was exultant and triumphant.”

“I thought everyone knew that.” — Joe Bob Briggs, www.joebobbriggs.com

Thank you, Joe Bob. As this year winds down, as a prediction for the new year coming in, I would add only this —

Yee-HAW!

On This Day: Bay to Breakers

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San Francisco, May 7, 2004: Once again, today is the famous Bay to Breakers race where thousands of runners run from the San Francisco Bay to the ocean. That is from way downtown, up Market Street, and then out past the Panhandle Park and through Golden Gate park to the beach.

In years past, I’d wake in my fourth-floor garrett at Lyon and Oak, fuzzily wondering what was the hubbub. Peering down from my kitchen windows, I’d see the runners — many in oddball costumes — pouring up the street and through the skinny park. There, watching them and drinking my coffee, I would ponder life and experience the gratitude that comes of not being among them.

This year, there’s bad news about running naked.

It seems that every year more and more people run the 7.5 mile race without clothes, and let me tell you some of these folks are way too floppy, but in the main, skinny people run, and so it generally works out, if you follow me.

Last year, more than 200 skinny-dippers trundled through the streets, sort of like very late streakers joining the party twenty years later. However, this year the police have decided to issue citations to naked runners.

In fine San Francisco doughnut shop fashion, however, the police have announced that they will only issue citations to the folks who fail to clothe themselves after the finish line. After all, a tradition is a tradition, right?

And of course, when interviewed, it came out that the policemen felt that running into the race, demanding a driver’s licence, and writing up a ticket while trotting alongside the nudie runner … well, it’s just not their thing.

Dogs Not Allowed

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Spring 1990: Some ten years earlier at Christmas time, Adrienne had rescued Holly the black cockapoo from the Humane Society, as a Christmas present for her father. Holly, with new puppies, had been abandoned upon a freeway. The puppies were adopted fast, and Holly then found a happy home with Adrienne, back in those days in Berkeley.

Her father, back in New Hampshire, was an avid climber and one of the founders of the Appalachian club. Twice he’d taken her climbing the mountain. The first time she loved it, and the second time, becoming a teen, she hated it, as was proper.

Back in New England, he’d been a “tramp” printer. That means a printer skilled in setting type, fine art books to newspapers, who was very good and who moved from job to job. They lived in nice houses, and he built a stone fence, and he liked to garden, and often worked a midnight shift.

When he’d been a young teen, his own father had left one day, and never came back. Clifford, oldest of six, had to drop from school to earn for the family. He read and studied anyway, and became a liberal intellectual, and when the war came he met Helen the actress and a week later they were married.

So now that he was retired, living in Pacific Grove, it seemed that Holly was to be his Christmas present.

But it didn’t work out that way.

Pacific Grove, not far from Monterrey, is the home of the Monarch butterfly. Every September, you can see them arriving from as far as Washington state. How can such a small creature travel so many hundreds of miles?

The Monarchs are black with bright yellow and orange designs. Some are huge, and to see them thick in the trees, and the air bright with their fluttering designs … it’s stupendous. Clifford and Hazel probably moved there because of the mild climate, and because Clifford was a lighthouse enthusiast, writing articles about lighthouses and lighthouse keepers, and visiting lighthouses up and down the coast.

The lonely point in Pacific Grove, and the lighthouse there in the grey air … perhaps it gives us an image of the man and his life.

Clifford was happy to have Holly, but love had been at work in the weeks before. Holly pined when Adrienne left. When Adrienne returned, Holly leapt with joy. And after a few visits, when Adrienne was about to leave, Clifford said, “You know, I never really wanted a dog, and it’s really clear that Holly is really your dog, so why don’t you take her back with you?”

“You mean it?” said Adrienne, thrilled.

He nodded, smiling.

And over the years, Holly and Adrienne had adventures together. Once Adrienne awoke, and found a hole dug beneath the fence. The trail led to the home next door. There, in the pool, Holly weakly treading water. Having fallen in, she could not climb up the ledge. Pulled out, she lay on her side, heaving to catch her breath. Whew!

And now this weekend, being Springtime and us feeling adventurous, Adrienne and Holly and I drove the surveillance vehicle down to Pacific Grove, where I’d made reservations. “Make sure they take dogs,” Adrienne had told me.

The year before, when Clifford had passed away, in his mind he was directing a movie, and one day he’d pulled all the tubes out of his arm, and faded into black during the night. Adrienne’s mother Hazel now lived in a home in southern California. But Adrienne wanted to show me the town where they’d once lived.

We drove to the motor hotel and I went in to sign us up. “You take dogs,” I said. The lady at the desk confirmed that dogs were just fine.

We drove to the room, and I made a great show of parking the car just so. “This place doesn’t take dogs,” I told Adrienne, “so we’ll need to smuggle her in.” Adrienne nodded. I went to unlock the door, while Adrienne waited in the car. “OK!” I called out, “The coast is clear!”

Quickly, Adrienne ran into the room with Holly wrapped up in a towel. I brought things in and we unpacked. When we went to see the lighthouse, we pulled the getaway vehicle so that our doorway couldn’t be seen from the office. When Holly needed to pee, we made sure to climb out the back window into the vacant lot next door. Late that night, we made sure to keep Holly from barking at neighbor sounds, to prevent discovery. And the next day, we cleverly smuggled her out again.

Later, as we were driving home from Pacific Grove, Adrienne read through the pretty brochure we’d picked up from the motor hotel. Suddenly she stiffened.

“Hey!” she said, “That place takes dogs!”

Telemarketers, The Eternal

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Bankrate.com:] Yet more responses for your telemarketer-calling pleasure —

I KNOW YOU!
As soon as the telemarketer identifies himself, you exclaim: “Bill? Bill! Is that you? Wow! It’s been forever! What have you been doing all this time?”

I KNOW BETTER
As soon as the telemarketer identifies himself, you exclaim: “Bill! Bill Johnson? The hell you say! You’re scamming the wrong guy buddy! Because I KNOW Bill Johnson … and you’re not him! Now listen to me. You get the real Bill Johnson, and you have him call me immediately, you hear? I’ve had just about enough of this!”

GOOD PLAN
After the telemarketer has told you what they’re selling, you say, “That sounds pretty good, and you’ve called at just the right time, I must say. But I want to know one thing … Is it dischargable in bankruptcy?”

THIS IS SHE
When the telemarketer asks for you by name, or when the telemarketer asks if you are the person in charge of purchasing, you answer (if you are a guy): “This is she.”

Then for the rest of the conversation, you speak in your most manly voice, but continually express a feminine viewpoint.

PAYMENT PLAN
When they tell you what they’re selling, express interest, and then ask, “Can I pay with Food Stamps?”

Ruru the Guru — Paying Debts with Dreams?

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San Francisco Yellow Pages, 1986: In the Yellow Pages that year you’d find listed “Third Ear Telepathic Answering Service” at 221-3333. If you called it you might hear this —

“Hello and thank you for calling Third Ear Telepathic Answering Service, your absolutely free telepathic answering service — at no charge whatsoever!

“I am your Host and Operator Ruru the Guru, speaking to you direct from the Himalaya Hideaway.

“You know, some people just can’t believe that we’re providing free telepathic answering service. In fact the other day me and my buddy, Babba Jamas, was coming back from the little Himalaya Convenience Store up the gulch, and one of the Sherpas that was helping us hold the rope, he asked:

“Ruru, you know when you’re dreaming?

“Well, yes, not that I ever sleep personally, but yes.

“Well, (he went on), You know how you’ll be dreaming and when you wake up sometimes you can’t remember the dreams?

“Well, of course everybody’s had that experience.

“Well, Ruru, (he went on), Where do all those dreams go? I mean, do you suppose those dreams are taken as payment for all the things that are supposed to be free, like love and sex and Third Ear Answering Service?

“Well, I never! I was speechless! I was flabbergasted! Who ever heard of such a thing!

“No messages today.”

Ruru the Guru — Does he Really Like Me?

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San Francisco Yellow Pages, 1986: In the Yellow Pages that year you’d find listed “Third Ear Telepathic Answering Service” at 221-3333. If you called it you might hear this —

“Hello and thank you for calling Third Ear Telepathic Answering Service, the good-time telepathic answering service that can get you fixed up!

“I am your Host and Operator Ruru the Guru, speaking to you direct from the Himalaya Hideaway.

“You know, sometimes I think you humans do things the hard way.

“For example, on Saturday nights I work a lot in a bar off Union Street. When people start to run low I carry the message to Joe the Bartender. You may know the place. Joe always hands you a fresh one about the time you start to think about it.

“Anyway, there’s a woman in gold lame, slit skirt, and pearls down to here, she asks me:

“Ruru,” (she asks), “That guy across the way, been looking at me all night, I wonder if he really likes me?”

“I said I’d find out.

“After I spent a few seconds in his mind, I was kind of liking her looks myself! So I went back and said–

“He’d sure like to find out if he likes you!

“She said to ask him to come sit over here. So I did.

“And she sez ask him to buy me a drink. So I did, and he did.

“She sez ask him to put his arm around me. So I did, and he did. And then she starts to ask me …

“And right there I put my foot down.

“Hell, lady. He’s sitting right beside you. He looks friendly. Ask him yourself!”

Ruru the Guru sez “Equipment Savings Direct to You”

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San Francisco Yellow Pages, 1986: In the Yellow Pages that year you’d find listed “Third Ear Telepathic Answering Service” at 221-3333. If you called it you might hear this —

“Hello and thank you for calling Third Ear Telepathic Answering Service, the free telepathic answering service that doesn’t cost a thing.

“I am your Host and Operator Ruru the Guru, speaking to you direct from the Himalaya Hideaway.

“You know, sometimes I think you Americans are so suspicious. Just now when I said our service is free, several thousand of you thought What’s the catch? and How do they do it?

“Really! So suspicious! OK, OK, here’s the deal …

“Look, when we deliver your messages to your friends and neighbors we deliver them by telepathy. No telephones. And we pass on the equipment savings direct to you!

“So next time you get that impulse to say something to someone and they’re not there — like Thanks! or Thinking of You! or I Love You! — don’t reach out and thump somebody. Just think it real clear and we’ll deliver it special delivery right to their head.

“Best of all, it’s free.”

 
 

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