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Echoes from the Loafers’ Club Meeting

I don’t understand the mutual funds I bought.

I know how you feel. I’m trying to make sense of my investments.

I’m just trying to make cents of my investments.

Driving by Bruce’s Drive

I have a wonderful neighbor named Bruce. Whenever I pass his drive, thoughts occur to me. John Foy & Associates, a personal injury law firm, analyzed data from all 50 states, evaluating them on five crucial factors: road fatalities, rural road conditions, urban road conditions, highway spending per mile and highway spending per capita to determine which states have the best and worst roads in America. Minnesota took the top spot for road quality, followed by Delaware and Utah. New Mexico had the worst roads in the nation, followed by Louisiana and Mississippi.

Preply, an online language learning platform, analyzed YouTube videos and call recordings and found Minnesota was the state with the fastest talking residents, clocking in at 5.34 syllables per second, followed by Oregon, Iowa, Kansas and North Dakota. Louisiana was the slowest-talking state at 4.78 syllables per second. The average American’s talking speed is 5.09 syllables per second.

According to Cottonelle, toilet paper was invented in the 14th century for the Hongwu dynasty, but only the royal family and the imperial court had access to them. In Europe, people used rags, whatever cloth was available, including sleeves. Wealthy Europeans used wool, hemp or lace. The first mention of toilet paper appeared in Europe in the 16th century. In North America, throughout the 1700s, people were wiping with whatever they had on hand, including corncobs and seashells. Seashells? Ouch! In 1857, a New Yorker named Joseph Gayetty introduced and patented toilet paper. He called it “Medicated Paper for the Water-Closet” and printed his name on every sheet. The medicated paper contained aloe and was sold in packages of 500 sheets for 50 cents. The Sears catalog began in 1888 and people commonly used catalogs to clean up in an outhouse. In the late 1800s, the British Perforated Paper Company started producing toilet paper in the UK. It was sold in individual squares with a rough texture. In 1890, toilet paper became available in perforated sheets on a roll. In Germany, the Hakle company’s slogan was, “If you don’t want to say toilet paper, ask for a roll of Hakle.” The first splinter-free TP was introduced in 1930.

I’ve learned

Wile E. Coyote should have ordered from some place other than Acme.

With great power comes a large electric bill.

Sometimes, when I buy a bag of air, I’m surprised to find a few potato chips in it.

The clinical term is gluteus medius tendinopathy, though it’s also often referred to as gluteal amnesia. Sitting for long periods without moving can cause this condition called “dead butt syndrome.”

Bad jokes department

My cousin sings in his car when he’s driving in reverse. He wants to become a backup singer.

Who said, “Life is like a bouquet of flowers. You never know what you’re going to get”? Florist Gump.

My neighbor Crandall just bought a sweet car online. It was previously owned by Neil Diamond.

Nature notes

American white pelicans migrate to the Gulf of Mexico with October and November being the peak migration months. In “A Sand County Almanac,” Aldo Leopold described migrating pelicans this way: “Let a squadron of southbound pelicans but feel a lift of prairie breeze… and they sense at once that here is a landing in the geological past, a refuge from that most relentless of aggressors, the future. With queer antediluvian grunts they set wing, descending in majestic spirals to the welcoming wastes of a bygone age.”

The world’s most dangerous bird is the cassowary, although ostriches and emus can be dangerous, and I know a guy who nearly choked while trying to inhale a giant turkey leg. The cassowary is a flightless bird native to Australia and New Guinea and has killed humans with slashing blows of its feet, which have long dagger-like toenails. It will surprise no one to learn that a pet cassowary killed a Florida man.

Darwyn Olson of Hartland asked where multicolored Asian lady beetles lay their eggs. They’re laid on the undersides of leaves of low-growing ornamentals, trees, roses, wheat, tobacco, soybeans and other plants. Common buckthorn is a woody shrub or small tree and is an overwintering host plant of the soybean aphid, which lays its eggs on buckthorn in the fall. The eggs overwinter and hatch in the spring. The lady beetles feed on those aphids.

Meeting adjourned

“Judge not, that ye be not judged.”—Matthew 7:1. Be kind.