Link:

Felix: [Repeats forcefully.]

Schma! Schma! Schma! Schma! Schma!

(My brother can do this better than anyone.)

I've got LOTS more to say on this topic.  Suffice it to say, Why Carbon?  It's SIXTH!  Why not Argon?

Let's go hear Toyota try to compare their Beryllium footprint vs. a Hemi?  They won't.  Know why??  No dif! No natural advantage to make it look like somehow Carbon didn't start out on third base and think it hit a triple.

I learned this from my oldest son.  It's like the schoolyard bully.  Get the biggest kid and he's bound to challenge the skinny kid to a punching contest.  This happened to my son.  He was the skinny kid.  Nay:  The skinny clever kid who, at age 6, had the presense of mind to say, "I got an idea.  Let's have a running contest."  The bully agreed, and promptly lost. 

Carbon... oh, how original.  Please.  Helium is way more fun, it's ahead of Carbon in the batting order and it's a noble gas! 

So the next time Larry David's ex-wife comes walking in your direction, you can be that skinny clever kid.  Tell her why that aircraft part she had made into a canteen she's carrying can't compare with the Strontium footprint of a recyclable Arrowhead water.  (Or carbon, for that matter, but I digress.  Or even its water footprint, but that's a molecule.  In case you're ever asked, Oxygen is the big one.)

Read the chart above.  Pick one.  Get thee to Thallium before someone blogs about it on HuffPost.  Better yet, YOU blog about it on HuffPost!  Pimp that Krypton footprint! 

* Appealing to the judges for a little poetic license on this one.  Where's Leezer now that I need her? 

Tell me what you seeLet me call you sweetheart

On this day, 10 years ago...

I'm in love with you

The world became a more beautiful place.

Let me hear you whisper

I learned the words to 'Daddy's little girl' weeks before you arrived

That you love me too

But the first time I held you, this song came out instead

Keep the love light shining

You don't toddle up and give me wet kisses on request anymore

In your eyes so blue

Or call me Dadd-a

Let me call you sweetheart

But when you don't know you're doing it; when you're not paying attention

I'm

You still reach for me

in

Still lean on me

love

And it makes me soar... and pray

with

That you'll always want me along for the ride.

youuuuuuuuuuuuuu.

Happy Birthday, sweetheart.

I've mentioned this before, but there seems to be no END to what the pampered class will do to protect themselves from the suburban jungles out there. 

Detroit may be sinking into Lake Michigan, and maybe they got lost when Americans stopped buying cars and started buying leatherbound coccoons on radials.  Whatever happened to crusing Route 66 in a Delta 88 convertible?? 

Today's commuters have heated-and chilled-leather seats, entertainment systems with satellite radio and TV, GPS guidance systems and more.  Rear cameras have replaced mirrors.  And you can't get a decent bumper sticker on the back bumper these days without screwing up your reverse radar.  But no matter, we've all gone from bumper stickers to initialed ovals on our back windows.

STill, nothing...  NO-THING comes close to evoking the suburban jungle like the armament you can slap on your SUV these days.  Remember Daktari?!?  Dr. Marsh Tracy.  Careening across the African wild in his Jeep, treating the sick lions and beasts of the Wameru, and saving them from the ever-present poachers.  This man feared naught. 

But by today's standards, Daktari was a sap.

Take a look at his vehicle.  What's missing?  Good Lord, it's as plain as the nose on its face...  No grille guard! 

How did he keep the brush away from his headlights?  How did he nudge the errant pachyderm out of his way?  How did he protect himself from errant lacrosse sticks or tee shots?? 

The grille guard sprang from the lineage of the roll bar and its cousin, the locomotive cow-catcher.  It's a survival necessity.  Don't traverse the globe without it. 

Nothing projects fierce rough-hewn brawn like the grille guard.  Dr. Marsh Tracy didn't understand this.

Thankfully, today, there are Doctors who do understand.  They're our fearless periodontists and podiatrists.  They're the plastic surgeons who know how to keep the rhino in rhinoplasty... in their Volvos, BMWs and Lexus SUVs. 

They know. 

And I want to pay special tribute to the "Daktari of Danbury" I saw this morning, on his misison, no doubt, to deliver his daughter safely to her prep school.  There I was, travelling at a safe speed and distance from other cars when suddently he appeared from out of nowhere, looming in my rear-view mirror, filling me with a sense of... of...

GRAM!!!!

Why say what I can show...

On your right:  What his car looked like. 

On your left:  The "cat" glasses my Grandmother used to wear.

There is nothing more I can do to this man that his own lack of self awareness hasn't already done.  I just wanted to thank him for reminding me of my sweet, sweet Grams!