Is that a cake or a bonfire?

This week I reached that point in life where, if you round to the nearest century, I am 100 years old--in the company of such as Bob Hope and Strom Thurmond, were they still alive. I received among other things, a cane, (which I intend to wave,) and a sample pack of Viagra, (which I intend to forward to Bob Dole.) Birthdays can be inspiring. Since I didn't make my money the old-fashioned way, through inheritance, I've always had a ready eye for the get-rich-quick scheme. This week's contribution to the genre is birthday ninjas-for-hire. They come down ziplines out of the blue, clad in black from hood to foot, to surround you on the street. Within seconds you are bound, gagged and stuffed into a black SUV with tinted windows that rushes you off to a surprise party in an undisclosed location. Later, the silent assailants (all trained in CPR and equipped with portable defibrillators,) dump you back on a random street corner in the middle of the night. Many happy returns of the day.

Middle-aged Mutant Ninja Gardener

Radio and internet work can be pretty sedentary. The result can be a shape that should never be seen in spandex. We've bought exercise equipment, and for a little while it saw regular use--as a laundry hanger. I've settled on aerobic and destructive forms of gardening as an exercise plan, and I'm finally getting into those places on my property where, if this was an action movie, the hero's love interest would stumble over a skull with a flint-headed arrow stuck in an eye socket and scream. Who knew there were tractor tires and burned-out burn barrels, barn door hardware, rusted grills and whatnot under the creeper-covered debris of ice-storm '98? Surely this clawfoot tub once did duty as a shrine to the Virgin. Lacking small engine skills, it's all hand-tool work, hacking at nature like some middle-aged mutant ninja gardener. But I did unearth and liberate an apple tree I'd long left for dead:

The grape-choked apple
struggles fruitless toward the light--
uproot all the vines.

On Road Kill

Can't wait for David Sommerstein's story Monday on the Clarkson research project seeking to reduce the road kill of local turtles. I have a Tibetan view of my big old blue station wagon--it's the opposite of a prayer wheel, automatically accumulating bad karma to my account as it grinds under my fellow sentient beings. I had a dream that all the road kill came back at once--snowbanks made of fur and meat--ewwww! But one time I saw cars backed up both ways on Rt. 11, watching for ten minutes while a washtub-sized turtle dawdled across to the next patch of wetland with a full-grown cattail plastered to its shell, waving back and forth. Maybe the Clarkson folks can put long antennas with fox tails on their turtle radio-tracking tags.