Little boy.  Context seems to suggest he was six years of age.  He is walking alongside his mother.

“What about an Age Power?  It’d turn everyone into a six year old!”
After that sort of deliberate pause in order to think of best way to humor him, mom says “That would be interesting.”

My thought on that scenario would be that it would turn into a Dystopian Horror, which would have to be untangled with a certain percentage of the six year olds having to become “Wise Beyond Their Years” to take up in a real hurry to pick up Societal Leadership Roles — I suppose you can call this vaguely Randian fable.  There will likely be a somber feeling to this feat, a real sense of Innocence Loss.

I don’t think that is where the six year old boy is going with his story, though.  At least, I hope not.

I passed by the Rose Quarter while it was promoting a show of a particular bent.  Roll through the punch-lines, three Southern accents.

“You might be a redneck.”
“Here’s your sign.”
“GIT ‘R DONE!!”

Roll throught the information on the show’s time and place.  Then roll through a full joke for each of these catch-phrases.

I have to take a pause to consider the question of whether they’re all the same joke.  The Jeff Foxworthy and “Other Guy” jokes seem to boil down to the same routine, but I’m a bit lost at whether Larry the Cable Guy’s routine is a variation of the same joke.  I don’t know — it seems to mostly be the “Say the thing really loud” line of comedy — I admit I have never bothered to pay attention to the structure of the joke.  Is the joke that he’s proposing to do impossible and stupid things?

I know of “Here’s your sign” as a Country Novelty hit in, I guess, 1997.  It seemed to have an unusual amusement value to some of my peers in my high school for roughly two days, and then disappeared — as it was meant to do.  It was incorrectly referenced as from “Jeff Foxworthy, or something” — which boosters my point that it is the same stupid routine.

I don’t know if the Country Station in this city is giving away tickets to this event, but I do have the perfect phone-in contest to win tickets to this comedy extravaganza.  Play through the lines “You might be a redneck”, “Here’s your sign” and “GIT ‘R Dun” and ask simply — “Who’s that other guy — the ‘Here’s your sign’ guy?”  The problem is it may be a radio contest that doesn’t get the correct answer in time for the show.

I regularly buy soup from the deli of a large well known supermarket chain, choosing between Clam Chowder, Chili, or Italian Wedding Soup depending on the basic factor of what I feel like at that time, and how well the thing looks to have held up.

One day I was looking over the choices, and someone came behind me and said, “You try the Tomato Soup?”  My answer, “No.”  He then shook his head, and said “Good.  Because, my lord, that is terrible.”

Skip forward a week or two.  I am again looking over my choices.  An elderly lady stands next to me.  Asks “You try the Tomato Soup?”  My answer, “No.”  She then says, “Oh, you should.  It’s wonderful!”

I note that other than these two occurences, nobody has tapped me about any of the choices.  That’s some divisive soup!

Three or four college aged people were standing outside a house with sparklers in hand — rolling them around as though it were the Fourth of July.

“Happy Presidents’ Day!  Woo Hoo!”
“Here’s to Truman!”
“Johnson!!”

Any reason for a celebration, I suppose.

The other day, there was this man on The Max.  He was either “Fellowshipping” or “Praying with slash for” a sympatico mother and child of his same general religious bent.

“And GOD… He has his ways.  It doesn’t matter what the condition of the shoes on your feet are, or the shirt on your back, or what your circumstances are.  He’ll guide you through and he has his purpose.
“AMEN.”

It went on basically like that for another few rounds.  I wasn’t much paying attention.  While I mildly frown on such a scene, any demonstration of my displeasure is not worth the effort.  But things got weirder.

“And God’s Plan… is the DESTRUCTION OF Portland at the end of the year!  Halleluia!”
“Wait.  I don’t agree with that part.”

The man across from me, who was visibly chaffing before, because irate.  “That’s It!  Where’s the Emergency?”

“See.  He is the ANTI-CHRIST Force we must shield against!”

I got off at the next stop.  So did Mister Apocalypse Head.  The Anti-Christ Spirit was talking with the conductor, pointing to Apocalypse Head.  I don’t know what happened after that.

I do suffer this generalized fear that this brand of End Times Religious represents a larger segment of the population than is comfortably tolerable.  You’ve seen the preachers on TBN, read this or that, have met them on some level.  They’re out there.

“So, I turned in a paper about Slavery from women’s perspective, and”

I did not quite catch the next line or so, as I was not evesdropping per se, paying no rapt attention or mind.  But I thought I caught “and in the margins, he wrote ‘[blah bleh blah].”

“[Loud Gasp].  He wants you SO BADLY.”

If I were drinking anything at that moment I would have done the classic spit take.  That was not a response I was expecting to hear to the rather quiet discussion of a college student’s essay response.  I turned my head over, wondering about the protocol for inappropriate sexual advances from college professors or student aides, and saw — to my relief, that there were two conversations going on between two different pairs of undergraduate late teen early twenty something year old women, and the horrifying possibility of a suggestive  s and m comment to a paper regarding  to a “woman’s perspective on slavery” could respectfully be shoveled out of my head.

When I passed by a few minutes on my way out, the two who were discussing sex were doing so in hushed tones, evidentally aware loudly gasping “He wants you SO BADLY” cannot help but draw attention.

There was this woman on the tram, who was holding a sign out toward the window — obviously a political message of some kind for passerbyers (mostly at stops, seeing as that’s about the only time anyone would be able to focus on the sign.)

A guy — I’d guess age 17 or thereabouts, asked her to turn it over so he could read it.  When he did, he became puzzled.  “I … don’t get it.  That’s like, 2 different messages.  What does Abortion have to do with Homosexuals?  I can understand one message or the other, but what?”

The woman said something I couldn’t hear, and turned the sign back toward the window.  I could half explain how someone mixes the two items, but I decided to wait and see what the sign said when I left the place a few stops later.

“Free Abortions for Immigrant Lesbians.”

I… don’t get it.  Is there something in the ordering of the two words — would “immigrant lesbians” mean something different than “lesbian immigrants”?  Is there something to be said for the “Exceptions of Rape and Incest” here — I think Lesbians have a disproportionate number of unwanted or unplanned pregnancies?

Am I on Candid Camera, or being “Punked”?

I walked past a gay bar a week ago Sunday afternoon.  A man approached me, “Hey!  Can you do me a favor?”

I shrugged.  “What do you want me to do?”

“There’s a contest going on here to name “Portland’s Miss Queenie*”.  My friend is running.  Could you go in and vote on the ballot for Shanda Lier?**  Only need ID, don’t need to buy anything.”

I shook my head, and plucked the first thing I could think of out of my head.  “Sorry.  Already voted for Shelly Pisces.”

So that’s the state of electioneering and campaigning for political campaigns these days.  It makes me long for the days of Tammany Hall.

* Totally made up, and purposefully as lame a title as I could muster from my head.
** Name plucked from googling “Drag Queen Names”, and looking over a bad list.

There is this tradition of changing some line or other of an old song to new effect.  Once upon a time, a cover of a Don Henley song was on radio play-lists, and it misfired slightly.  Alanis Morisette now sings, in concert, an altered version of her song “Ironic” to cover same sex marriage — which is still no closer to being Irony.

Some days ago — Saturday or Sunday, two people were singing on a street corner.  the song “Ohio” by Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young.  Nothing terribly noteworthy.  But they changed the lyrics.  “Four Dead in Af-Ghan-Istan.”  It wasn’t a terribly good refit, syllable wise — “Istan” doesn’t match “O”.  It also suffers that “Boys of Summer cover” problem — the song’s meaning in contemporary times does not match, and we still have the out of place reference to President Nixon.  Evidentally, the duo was proud of themselves, though, doing “Four Dead in Af-ghan-istan” four times whence the old song played it twice.