Things You Never Knew Existed (again)

Once again I received a wonderful Things You Never Knew Existed catalog in spite of the fact that I have never sent these wonderful people a dime. home page  I would love to buy from them, but their inventory includes things I'm happy to celebrate - but would never want to own - such as...

It's unclear whether this is a small model or a way for people to vie for the Darwin Awards.  If you're looking for something smaller scale...

I had a friend get one of these but I got turned off when I caught it humping a dragon fly.
If you're looking to make breakfast an adventure, how about...

For those of you who want your toast on the Dark Side.  And when the force sends your toast out the other end, you might require...

Or for those of you of a higher caliber...

But the best thing about Things You Never Knew Existed is the Tee Shirts.  I have posted several of them over the last two years.  Here's a few from their latest batch.

Makes sense

It's all a bit clearer now.

The great innovators - we owe them so much!

Anybody have a dog I can borrow?

Nobody can convince me they don't do that on purpose.

Unfortunately, many of their tee shirts are mean-spirited.  Those of you who are nice can skip to the video.  anybody... anybody?

 Gee - Mom liked photography...

Because we LIKE our phones!

 The only use I can think of for them.

Somebody sent me this one...  Actually two people did.

Here's my favorite of the bunch.

And finally, somebody who is on a lot of our minds this week.

These folks have nothing to do with the catalog folks - but it fits the theme.

O2

Oxygen to the brain – over-rated, or not? Those of you with remaining grey matter, discuss it among yourselves.

As we get closer (age-wise,) to the big sleep, small sleep becomes more problematic. Sprawling face-down half on the floor, half on the couch after copious beer doesn’t seem to work as well as it did in our late teens.

Now we’re told that alcohol-induced coma is unhealthy and kills brain cells.

And snoring, which was nothing more than a source of amusement to our friends (or annoyance to our partners,) is now a serious symptom of sleep apnea.

Apnea, like alcohol-induced coma, is unhealthy and kills brain cells.

You can’t shut your eyes for a minute without grey matter flying off into the nether regions. No wonder we elect the politicians we do – we are devoid of reasoning material.

Zombies aren’t just a fad on TV - they are us.

I’m not sure if we are more fragile than we were, or have developed a generational obsessive paranoia. Either way, I’m constantly worried that I’m falling apart.

But if this is true of us, shouldn’t it also have been true of generations past?

I remember being a kid watching Dad. Dad would sit in his recliner and snore so loud that he’d wake up the cat. Helix (the cat) looked at Dad with that haughty pissed-off look only disturbed cats can do, and wandered off to find a place where the floor boards weren’t rattling. All of us little Hausers giggled, hoping for another exploit of Dad’s sonorous power like the time his vocalizations vibrated the potted violet off the shelf and shattered the velveteened ceramic Elvis that Uncle Harvey had gotten Mom for Christmas.

The point is back in the sixties and seventies we weren't worried about Dad not breathing – to say nothing about the cat, the violet, or the ugly Elvis effigy. Maybe Dad, being a survivor of the depression and a veteran of WW2, was tough enough to go eight hours a night without O2.

We, on the other hand, are oxygen wimps. I blame Dr. Spock. He spoiled us all.

not

So I guess that not breathing while I sleep is a problem. I don’t want one of those CPAP mini-ventilators, cause I might be confused for a mostly dead organ donor waiting for a patient needing corneas.

Instead, I set a wedge under my pillow, a stiff band-aid across the bridge of my nose, a plastic horseshoe in my nostrils and a gag-inducing retainer in my mouth. I turn on the sound machine to Oceans 2, purge my sleeping area of blue light, and set my air cleaner to “puree.”

If I was capable with all that crap, I might sigh nostalgically, thinking of how little I appreciated Dad’s machismo as he sawed wood in his recliner.

Or my own back in the days of six-pack comas on available couch cushions.

Come to think of it, we really much concerned with brain health in the sixties.