Asscuseame, Yahoo search you, what? Can't find it?
by Bryce Martin

Jassacksophone.
What is it? What does it mean?
What is intriguing is that you won't find the word or variations of it going through Yahoo search. That's highly unusual since almost any random selection of keys in that long box will produce a result.
Jassacksophone was a word coined by western sidekick actor Smiley Burnette. Coined is likely not correct here, since I am, I'm sure, one of probably less than a dozen people on this planet who knew this in the first place and among an even smaller group who would remember it at all. On screen, Burnette was sometimes in character as Frog Millhouse, a slightly bumfuzzled pal to Gene Autry, and he rode a jackass instead of a horse. (That's a totally different side issue since Burnette usually rode a screen-favorite white horse with a black circle around one eye.) When he was Frog Millhouse on the big screen Burnette had a jackass that liked to bray. Frog, a singer with a frog-like voice, was able to tug on an ear or tail to manipulate the braying sounds in such a way that he could get the animal to provide a sort of musical accompaniment to the squeeze-bulb horn and other noise making contraptions tied on the animal.
He called his braying musical beast a jassacksophone (think "bassackwards" for "ass backwards.")
I searched the word while on a nostalgia binge, seeking to tie the past to the current for some reason known only by certain cranial crevices. By adding it here, I hopefully have added it to the multitudinous list of searchables.

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Drinking coffee from a saucer
by Bryce Martin

My grandmother drank coffee from a saucer. She experimented with different brands but usually brought home Folger's' mountain grown. She bought the two-pound tin for economy. It was a red can that opened with a metal key wind. My grandfather liked his cut plugs of Tinsley chewing tobacco so he would claim the empties and convert them to spittoons. Grandma poured the steaming hot liquid from her percolator into a cup sitting on a saucer but she didn't drink it out of the cup. She would add a little Milnot or Pet evaporated milk and sugar, stir and then she would leave the cup off the plate and set it aside. Next, she would dip a spoonful of the still semi-raging hot brown liquid and blow on it. You could see a slow wave go from one edge of the spoon to the other. Her lips would get close enough to the spoon to gauge the intensity of the heat it emitted. After two or three blows, she emptied the spoon's coffee onto the saucer, picked up the saucer, carefully tilted it downward and drank the coffee. Other of my older relatives secretly wondered if it was a habit picked up from old world relatives. I wondered too so I asked her one day. She seemed surprised that I would ask. "It's hot," she said. "I like to cool it down. I don't want to scald my tongue." As she got older, she switched to Postum. She still, though, drank it from a saucer, except when it cooled to her liking in the spoon and she drank it from that.

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Barry Bonds: Getting His Just Undue
by Bryce Martin

The "Satan of Swat," the guy who cheapened the most hallowed record in all of sports, how do you measure he? This way:

Feature flash from Yahoo:


One of our favorite ways of measuring the popularity of sports stars is to check jersey searches. If a player is cool enough for fans to wear his or her name on their back, the athlete's status in buzz is cemented.

1. David Beckham Jersey
2. Marion Barber Jersey
3. Tony Romo Jersey
4. Walter Payton Jersey
5. Tim Tebow Jersey
6. Brett Favre Jersey
7. Michael Vick Jersey
8. Hope Solo Jersey
9. Devin Hester Jersey
10. Vince Young Jersey
11. Randy Moss Jersey
12. Patrick Willis Jersey
13. Reggie Bush Jersey
14. Tom Brady Jersey
15. Peyton Manning Jersey
16. Larry Bird Jersey
17. Joe Montana Jersey
18. Craig Biggio Jersey
19. Steve Nash Jersey
20. Mia Hamm Jersey


My point is not in providing the list, but to remind that of the 20 named Barry Bonds is not one. Only one baseball player is, the now-retired Craig Biggio. The puffball who claims the career home run record does not have enough residue from that to even make the top 20?

I'll claim that as a certain amount of justice.

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Repent Now?
by Bryce Martin

Today's news flash:

Astronomers have spotted evidence of a second Earth being built around a distant star 424 light-years away.

Uh, oh. We may not know the exact day and time, but has God hitched his workbelt in preparation to forge a new beginning?

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They Don't Unmake 'Em Like They Used To
by Bryce Martin


Excerpt from a 1915 obit regarding a former Cookeville, Tenn., citizen:


(name omitted) as he was familiarly called by his large circle of friends, who were limited only to the extent of his acquaintance, was the very embodiment of the whole-souled, hospitably natured, generous-hearted Southern gentleman, and will be as greatly missed by all classes of people in his town and community as any other one man who could have been taken away.

Not a bad inscription:

Here Lies
Ded Ingone

Whole-Souled
Hospitably Natured
Generous-Hearted

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