Random Observations and Trivial Events

1. While waiting at the pharmacy to get a prescription filled, I noticed a display of plastic pill boxes –- you know, those ones where each day of the week has a compartment with a flip-top lid. They come in all sizes, and the largest size I saw displayed was huge. You could easily put three dominoes in each day’s compartment and still have space left. I know there are probably tens of thousands of people who take so much medication each day that they need a pill box this big –- maybe two or three boxes, I don't know. I hope I never, ever, have to take that much medicine.

2. There’s always at least a 30-year difference in age between the music that plays through a grocery store’s sound system and the music that the stock boys play on their personal boom boxes. The music on the store system is usually 70s pop and rock; the music on the boom boxes is usually rap, modern hard rock or contemporary country. While John Denver burbles from the ceiling, Ludacris is shouting it out on Aisle 14.

3. There’s a new product just out –- Mega M&Ms -- and it's supposedly 55 percent larger than regular M&Ms. What is the reason for bringing this product out? Are people complaining their regular M&Ms are too wimpy? Will we see Super Sweet Tarts next?

4. I bought the DVD of “Because of Winn-Dixie” for the kids when it was released Tuesday. This is another one of those rare movies that is not only entertaining for adults, but is clean enough and interesting enough even for pre-teen kids. I’m looking forward to watching it again. I predict that Annasophia Robb, the 11-year-old female lead, is going to be a major, major star someday. She also plays one of the bratty kids in “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” (a movie I haven’t seen yet), but be sure to see her play a very likeable character in “Winn-Dixie.”

5. While on vacation, I watched “Tombstone” for the first time. Wow! What a great, but brutal, movie. I’m not sure how historically accurate it is, but it’s great drama. I was admittedly surprised at how good an acting job Kurt Russell and Val Kilmer did. I don’t think of either one as a heavyweight thespian, but they were great in this.

6. I went along on a photo shoot Monday at a doctor’s office. As the photographer was inside a room getting shots of a posed examination, I was staying out of camera range in the hallway. I pace sometimes when I’m waiting, and as I was walking back and forth, a nurse came up to me, patted me softly on the back, and asked me in a very concerned voice, “Are you waiting for a family member?” When I told her that no, I was just waiting for the photo shoot to be over, she laughed and told me I had such a worried look on my face while I paced the hall that she thought I was anxious about a loved one.

7. Here in the Lone Star State, I notice that Dreyer’s ice cream has come out with two new flavors designed to appeal to rabid Texas college football fans (are there any other kinds?) Actually, it’s one flavor of ice cream packaged in two different cartons. The ice cream inside is “vanilla ice cream with fudge swirls and caramel-filled footballs,” but one carton has the name “Aggie Blitz” (for Texas A&M fans), while other cartons call it “Longhorn Stampede” (for University of Texas fans). Wouldn’t pigskin detract from the flavor of caramel?

8. I’m trying to figure out what I want to do with Muley’s World, and in which direction I want to take it. I feel it (and I) have been somewhat aimless lately. I guess I've got the blogging blahs.

9. There are days when I just absolutely cannot listen to talk radio, even conservative, pro-America, Christian talk radio. Some days it just seems like it’s the same conversation replayed for the 4,346th time, with the same good guys and bad guys, the same treachery, the same idiocy, the same frustrations. I like to maintain the illusion that the quality of my daily life doesn’t depend on whether the Democrats or Republicans score more points on a given day, or whether I am sufficiently outraged by the latest public outrageousness.

10. You know those wordless bathroom signs, where the only difference between the stick figures is that the female figure is shown wearing a skirt? What happens when they use these signs in Scotland, and a guy wearing a kilt walks up? Is he confused about where to go? Does he have the right to choose either one and not get in trouble?

11. I was walking through the halls of our church on Wednesday night, and I thought I heard the youth band upstairs playing a familiar song during their “youth hour.” Sure enough, it was a cover of “Freebird” by Lynyrd Skynyrd. Okay. Is this a new Baptist youth group anthem? Were the kids in the audience all holding up flaming Bic lighters and yelling “FREEBIRD!”?

12. I've heard that Ken Follett's book The Pillars of the Earth, a fictional account of the building of a cathedral in 12th century England, is a phenomenal read. Has anyone read it? If so, was it good?