on the edge of the big weekend

 I have a group of old Champaign beer drinking buddies who are all Cub fans and we email each other during the season, and sometimes during the off season and I know that more than one of them have big yards with birdfeeders so I consider them my panel of experts,

I got that phrase from Jimmy Swaggert who in one of his phases had maybe five people seated behind a counter and behind them was a big map of the world, and all of them were as ignorant as he was and mostly they just said "That's right Jimmy, you're so smart," (remind you of anybody?), and he called them his panel of experts.  Have we ever discussed televangelists?  Might be an interesting topic, but not for now.

Anyway I consulted my panel of experts and they were unanimous that this was no big deal.  All birds, like all humans, had certain bad habits, and as birds go, sparrows are not any worse than any others, so I guess I will just learn to live with them.

I don't have any furnace stories.  I guess I am pretty lucky because I lived in a lot of dumps in my Champaign hippie days, but I was mostly toasty warm enough in the winter and none of them ever blew up on me.  In fact you hardly ever hear of furnaces blowing up.  I reckon they have some kind of fail safe feature where if something is going wrong they shut down rather than blow up.  Seems a little dangerous though getting the furnace going while the inhabitant was sound asleep.

I have a melted plastic electrical appliance story though in this case it was a tv and not a clock.  When I was down in southern Illinois, I had friends who were a few years younger than me and among them were a young married couple 

(It was a teenage wedding, and the old folks wished them well

You could see that Pierre did truly love the mademoiselle

And now the young monsieur and madame have rung the chapel bell
"C'est la vie", say the old folks, it goes to show you never can tell

They furnished off an apartment with a two room Roebuck sale
The coolerator was crammed with TV dinners and ginger ale
But when Pierre found work, the little money comin' worked out well
"C'est la vie", say the old folks, it goes to show you never can tell

They had a hi-fi phono, boy, did they let it blast
Seven hundred little records, all rock, rhythm and jazz
But when the sun went down, the rapid tempo of the music fell
"C'est la vie", say the old folks, it goes to show you never can tell

They bought a souped-up jitney, 'twas a cherry red '53
They drove it down to Orleans to celebrate the anniversary
It was there that Pierre was married to the lovely mademoiselle

"C'est la vie", say the old folks, it goes to show you never can tell) 

living in a tiny rented house where their parents had loaned them an old tv so they could have some entertainment.  Of course the entertainment that they really liked was having all their beer drinking, pot smoking, buddies over for a party.  In the midst of the good times the tv had been moved from wherever it was to a radiator, and at some point in the beer and pot fog somebody looked over and saw the tv all melted.  Pretty cool.

We had a bungalow with a porch just as Beagles describes, but I had never heard of catching a sleeping sparrow, so I never tried it.  One has to wonder why would somebody do that, but I suppose if you were having a party such as the one in the last paragraph that would have seemed like a good idea.

Well Gentlemen, quite the weekend ahead of us.  Halloween tomorrow and the next morning we will wake to an extra hour that we can spend any way we choose, which will probably be to sleep it away and that evening well it will get dark awfully early so that we can contemplate the long pitiless winter ahead.  Monday will be election eve, and Tuesday will be The Election itself.  If all goes as predicted (and I know these predictions have been wrong before), Florida will fall around eight or nine and our long crazy nightmare will be over, and with the craziness gone we may be able to again discuss politics in a calm and reasoned manner.