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Good morning and welcome to Summit Up, the world's only daily column wondering what it must be like to be a dog, going down the highway at 65 mph, with your head hanging out the window.
Aside from the obvious exhilaration of having your tongue vibrate in the wind, getting gnats stuck to your eyelids and feeling your cheeks sag in the slipstream, we are thinking that, since smell is a dog's primary sense, it must be something akin to a human watching a DVD at super-fast-forward. Just imagine all those smells, maybe five to 10 per second, whipping past your nose: Other dogs, McDonalds French fries in the mini-van over in the next lane, that deer carcass rotting in the shoulder, the stinky sweatshirt left hanging on the fence by a forest squatter, the jar of Powerbait left behind by a fisherman last summer, and most of all, pile upon pile of doggy doo!
We know we've ranted and raved about how people don't clean up after their pooches, and that it really presents an aesthetic issue, but try to consider this from a dog's point of view. It's got to be pure bliss!
What got us thinking about all this of course is the fact that it's spring, which we know not only because it says so on the calendar, but because we can actually drive around with the car windows rolled down.
And yes, we did celebrate the equinox last week in true Summit Up style - by inviting into our humble abode some Ukrainian accordion players, an Indonesian gamelan orchestra featuring metallophones, xylophones, drums, gongs and bamboo flutes, as well as a Balinese dance troupe, which performed several Balih-balihan dances in honor of the season. Our favorite was the Janger Janger, performed by young girls wearing peacock crown headwear made from intricately woven, gold-colored coconut leaves. This, by the way, is a sit-down dance, involving highly coordinated hand, shoulder and eye movements. Then, after several bottles of vodka were consumed, the Ukrainian accordion player chimed in with a rousing polka (accompanied by the gamelan players) that got everybody dancing. That was the big, multi-cultural finale of our equinox evening, and let us tell you, it was one heck of a party. You haven't lived, or celebrated the changing of the seasons, until you've seen Balinese dancers doing the polka with Ukrainian potato farmers.
***
One of our staffers is reporting in from the home front today, where he spent the morning with a sick child. Along with trying to get some work done, our correspondent tells us that he's been reading the latest in kid lit, which in this case is a new science fiction thriller called "Zombie Butts From Uranus." As you might imagine, a book with this title has all sorts of possibilities for clever double entendres, not to mention downright crude humor that is perfect for distracting a sick eight-year-old with a throat so sore that he can barely talk or swallow! We highly recommend this book as a way to introduce youngsters to the science fiction genre. We don't want to give away some of the more sublte plot points, but suffice it to say that the first few chapters center around a flaming butt that crashes into the planet Uranus, triggering a giant, stinky methane explosion that revivifies a horde of cryonized zombie butts, that subsequently set out to invade Earth. Exciting stuff!
***
Finally, we're looking for a little help or medical advice. Not for ourselves, but for our dashboard-mounted, swivel-hipped bobble-headed Hula girl, who is drooping in the warm spring sunshine. She was quite perky at first, waving that grass skirt coquettishly as our trusty Subaru bounced through this season's crop of potholes. But after those first few warm days, the reflective heat from the black dashboard got to her, we think. Weak ankles, which is NOT a good trait in a Hula dancer. So now she leans way forward, her nose practically touching the ground while her feet are still planted firmly and flat on the ground. This is good for yoga, we suppose, but definitely impedes the full range of her Hula moves, which we've come to know and love the past few months. So we're wondering, should we consider some surgery, or maybe a back brace? Or should we replace her with a squatty-body Bhudda boy, who won't face the same gravity-induced challenges? Send an e-mail to summitup@summitdaily.com and let us know. Based on your votes, we may change our dashboard icon one of these days.
***
We out, practicing our polka moves.
Aside from the obvious exhilaration of having your tongue vibrate in the wind, getting gnats stuck to your eyelids and feeling your cheeks sag in the slipstream, we are thinking that, since smell is a dog's primary sense, it must be something akin to a human watching a DVD at super-fast-forward. Just imagine all those smells, maybe five to 10 per second, whipping past your nose: Other dogs, McDonalds French fries in the mini-van over in the next lane, that deer carcass rotting in the shoulder, the stinky sweatshirt left hanging on the fence by a forest squatter, the jar of Powerbait left behind by a fisherman last summer, and most of all, pile upon pile of doggy doo!
We know we've ranted and raved about how people don't clean up after their pooches, and that it really presents an aesthetic issue, but try to consider this from a dog's point of view. It's got to be pure bliss!
What got us thinking about all this of course is the fact that it's spring, which we know not only because it says so on the calendar, but because we can actually drive around with the car windows rolled down.
And yes, we did celebrate the equinox last week in true Summit Up style - by inviting into our humble abode some Ukrainian accordion players, an Indonesian gamelan orchestra featuring metallophones, xylophones, drums, gongs and bamboo flutes, as well as a Balinese dance troupe, which performed several Balih-balihan dances in honor of the season. Our favorite was the Janger Janger, performed by young girls wearing peacock crown headwear made from intricately woven, gold-colored coconut leaves. This, by the way, is a sit-down dance, involving highly coordinated hand, shoulder and eye movements. Then, after several bottles of vodka were consumed, the Ukrainian accordion player chimed in with a rousing polka (accompanied by the gamelan players) that got everybody dancing. That was the big, multi-cultural finale of our equinox evening, and let us tell you, it was one heck of a party. You haven't lived, or celebrated the changing of the seasons, until you've seen Balinese dancers doing the polka with Ukrainian potato farmers.
***
One of our staffers is reporting in from the home front today, where he spent the morning with a sick child. Along with trying to get some work done, our correspondent tells us that he's been reading the latest in kid lit, which in this case is a new science fiction thriller called "Zombie Butts From Uranus." As you might imagine, a book with this title has all sorts of possibilities for clever double entendres, not to mention downright crude humor that is perfect for distracting a sick eight-year-old with a throat so sore that he can barely talk or swallow! We highly recommend this book as a way to introduce youngsters to the science fiction genre. We don't want to give away some of the more sublte plot points, but suffice it to say that the first few chapters center around a flaming butt that crashes into the planet Uranus, triggering a giant, stinky methane explosion that revivifies a horde of cryonized zombie butts, that subsequently set out to invade Earth. Exciting stuff!
***
Finally, we're looking for a little help or medical advice. Not for ourselves, but for our dashboard-mounted, swivel-hipped bobble-headed Hula girl, who is drooping in the warm spring sunshine. She was quite perky at first, waving that grass skirt coquettishly as our trusty Subaru bounced through this season's crop of potholes. But after those first few warm days, the reflective heat from the black dashboard got to her, we think. Weak ankles, which is NOT a good trait in a Hula dancer. So now she leans way forward, her nose practically touching the ground while her feet are still planted firmly and flat on the ground. This is good for yoga, we suppose, but definitely impedes the full range of her Hula moves, which we've come to know and love the past few months. So we're wondering, should we consider some surgery, or maybe a back brace? Or should we replace her with a squatty-body Bhudda boy, who won't face the same gravity-induced challenges? Send an e-mail to summitup@summitdaily.com and let us know. Based on your votes, we may change our dashboard icon one of these days.
***
We out, practicing our polka moves.
