Most mornings I take a walk for an hour or so shortly after I get out of bed. Today was no different. Like most folks, I engage in this ritual in order to help keep my aging carcass in proper working order. I also reserve this time to let my mind air out and go wherever it pleases. Then again, sometimes I will use the morning hour to focus on a particular thing – sometimes work related, sometimes not. Some of my blogs are born or take shape during my morning walk. In that regard, each walk is different from any other.

However, one thing is strangely consistent about my walks, and that is that I almost always happen on one or more pennies lying in the street or on the sidewalk. Considering that I don’t look for pennies, I have to assume that there are many more on the street than the ones I notice. Most often, I see them near a local convenience store, suggesting that patrons either lost the pennies (which seems unlikely, as they also would probably have lost other coinage as well), or they received them in change and just tossed them. I also see pennies on residential streets, where the most compelling explanation for their presence is that someone tossed them from a moving car, as if they were trash.

I always stop to pick them up, not that having an additional penny or two will change my life. Rather, I suppose I pick them up because I seem to recall a relative, possibly my Granny, telling me that finding a penny meant good luck. However, I also rescue them from trash status out of some difficult-to-describe sense of respect for the currency itself and for the work that people do (most people, anyway) to earn a penny. Tossing it, as if it were garbage, just doesn’t seem right.

Well, all that got me to thinking about pennies today. A couple mouse clicks later, I found myself reading all sorts of things about pennies. Here is a sampling of what I found.

Many argue that pennies have become essentially worthless. I am certain that these are the same people who toss pennies away. They urge that the penny be should done away with and that the smallest unit of U.S. currency should be the nickel. However, there are others, who argue that the penny, which in 1787 became the first authorized form of U.S. currency, should remain part of our currency.

Included among the reasons given for the retention of the penny as part of our currency is that people still “count their pennies,” which is to say that when the economy slows people count their pennies and cash them in. In fact, there is a demonstrated inverse correlation between the demand on the U.S. Mint for coinage and the state of the economy. When the economy is good, people tend to save their coins (probably not wanting to carry them around), resulting in a need for more coins in the economy. By contrast, in bad times, people break open their piggy banks and flood the economy with coins. Who knew?

If you’re still with me here, you may be interested in reading some interesting Penny Facts. Included among them are the following:

A penny is 19 millimeters in diameter and weighs 2.5 grams.

A penny is comprised of 97.5% zinc and only 2.5 % copper.

The U.S. Mint produces over 13 billion pennies annually.

The penny was the first U.S. coin to feature a historic figure. President Abraham Lincoln has been on the penny since 1909, the 100th anniversary of his birth.

The penny was the first U.S. coin on which appeared the words “In God We Trust.”

The average penny has a life of 25 years.

Now, for the penny savers, here is some interesting information (with visuals), gleaned from The MegaPenny Project. For example, did you know that a billion pennies, if neatly stacked, would occupy the volume of five school buses?

And if that is not enough to dazzle you, consider this. If the cubic footage of the Empire State Building were matched by an equal cubic footage of pennies, you would be talking about one trillion, eight hundred eighteen billion, six hundred twenty-four million pennies, which would amount to $18,186,240,000.00. If the same were true of the Sears Tower, you’re talking about two trillion, six hundred twenty-three billion, six hundred eighty-four million, six hundred and eight thousand pennies, with a value of $26,236,846,080.00. Sounds like an interesting construction project for Bill Gates, no?

And finally, behind Door Number 1 is a million dollars in cash. Behind Door Number Two is an opportunity to receive one penny the first day, double that penny the next day, then double the previous day’s pennies and so on for a month. Which would you choose? The correct answer is Door Number Two, because by the end of the month you would have received $10,737,418.23.

All that came from one walk. As Dax Montana would say, “Just Damn!”

Yesterday in Virginia Beach, a woman dressed like a clown, arrived at a local bank in a taxi. She got out of the taxi, walked into the bank, walked up to the teller, handed the teller a note demanding money, and robbed the damned bank. After the robbery, she left the scene, again in a taxi, and disappeared into a strip mall eight blocks away.

A police spokesman, demonstrating his razor-sharp investigative skills, observed that the timing of the robbery on the day before Halloween might be a factor. He stated, “My wife and I have dressed as clowns for Halloween before and stopped at a 7-11 on the way to a party and no one looked twice.” [Yo, Mr. Police spokesman, did it ever occur to you that the people in the store were trying to avoid staring at two obvious nitwits?]

This story just goes to show that it makes perfect sense to hate clowns.

Hey, wait a damned minute! Bill Cimino of Bloviating Inanities, lives in Virginia Beach, no? Maybe it really was a gouty man disguised as a woman clown? I’m just sayin’.

I had planned to post the link for Weird N.J., a site devoted to some of the more bizarre things in the Garden State, including ghosts, Jersey UFO’s and, of course, the Jersey Devil (hence, the name of the hockey team). However, Dax Montana, of The Dax Files, beat me to it, and he’s a Georgia guy. However, he clearly is a guy with a good eye for a link.

Check out Weird N.J., and then tell me that Jersey is not in interesting place to hang one’s hat.

That’s what we said as children as we held open our bag (or pillowcase) to the people who answered their doors on Halloween. We never said, “Trick or Treat?” Maybe it was a Jersey thing.

Truth is, I never cared much for Halloween. When I was very, very young I wore store-bought costumes. I still see them for sale in toy stores and large drug store chains. Typically, they were made of cheap material and were slit up the back permitting them to be worn over clothing. They tied in the back much like a hospital gown and invariably came with a cheap, plastic full-face mask.

Even at a young age, I felt like a bit of an ass walking about dressed up like a devil, or a ghost, or Peter Pan. Also, I found wearing the mask to be annoying as hell. My breath would blow noisily back onto my face, as I schlepped from house to house with my cronies and my pillowcase.

As I got older and grew out of the store-bought variety of costumes, we “made our own” costumes. The default “make-it-yourself” costume was that of a bum. All one needed was some raggedy jeans (they were called “dungarees” back then), an old torn shirt (one with patches was the best), and a raggedy hat of some kind. Put a little burnt cork on your face so you would look like you were dirty and needed a shave, and you were good to go.

I really felt like an ass walking around like that.

Not only did I feel like an ass because of the way I was dressed, but I also never much cared for the actual process of “trick or treating.” It felt too much like begging. “Anything for Halloweeeeeen?” was right up there with “Alms for the poor?” in my book.

I also did not like all the frantic walking to try to “hit as many houses as possible” during the five or six available hours after school, with the goal being to have to make a couple swings by home to empty the pillowcase. The hell of it is that I never really cared that much for the candy either.

To make matters worse, some of the people from whom we begged felt that it was appropriate and fun to make the “Trick or Treaters” earn their candy. One neighbor made each of chew on crackers, and the first person who could whistle got an extra piece of candy. I remember thinking, “Why the hell am I doing this silly shit? For an extra goddamned Tootsie Roll? I’d like to shove the Tootsie Roll up your ass, lady!”

Like I said. I never much liked Halloween.

So, why did I do it? I suppose I did it because all my friends liked Halloween. They liked dressing up, they were not uncomfortable with begging, and they relished the idea of having three or four bowls of candy at home.

However, it wasn’t simply peer pressure that had me on the street dressed up like an ass and begging for candy. My mother and my aunt (who lived upstairs from us) really liked Halloween, and I suppose I did the annual Halloween begging schlep so as not to disappoint them.

I did, however, disappoint them big-time in one respect. Every year they tried to get me to give up the bum costume and let them dress me up like a girl. The answer was always an emphatic “NO.” I think I would have rather been set afire than leave the house dressed up like a girrrrrrrlllllll, not to mention that walking around in my neighborhood dressed like a girl may have gotten me a pretty good ass-kicking from a few of the local shitheads.

So, tomorrow when the kiddies come to the door dressed in their costumes, some store-bought, and some not, I’ll smile and dutifully drop candy into their sacks, and I won’t make them whistle.

But secretly I’ll be wondering if any of them thinks that the whole Halloween dress-up-and-beg thing stinks.

BOO!

Zip, zero, nothing, zubin, zilch, zubonowitz, nuttin’, notafrigginthing, goose egg, naught, nil, nada, nichts. The foregoing describes the amount of creativity I can muster at this moment.

My muse must have taken the day off without letting me know. That’s what I get for giving her sick days.

Athena

?? Which Of The Greek Gods Are You ??
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Link via Sketches of Strain

I think Cousin Jack may be coming unglued. He’s talking to possums (and they’re talking back).

That’s what happens when you spend too much time reading the Tax Code.

Jack, come back to us. We’ll sit in traffic take a ride down the shore on the Parkway and have a sausage, peppers and onions sandwich on the Seaside Heights Boardwalk. It’ll straighten you right out.

It’s the time of the year for the people running for New Jersey state legislative offices to take to the radio waves with their amateurish, never-endingly played campaign commercials. One features an embarrassingly awful imitation of Arnold Schwarzenegger. I can think of few things that are more annoying and less informative than these radio spots.

Each candidate, either directly, or through actors (uniformly awful actors, I might add), does nothing but sling sixty-seconds worth of shit mud at the other candidate. The charges range from governmental recklessness to downright criminal conduct. Both parties do it.

The only thing I can conclude from listening to this crap is that, if only twenty percent of the things that each candidate says about the other are true, then neither of them is fit for office, and both of them ought to be in jail.

I’ll be glad when it’s over.

Boots on the Ground is a blog written by an infantryman (grunt, ground pounder, trigger puller, eleven-bravo) stationed in Iraq. This is one fine young man. Check out his blog – every day.

Link via Backstage, another Jersey Blogger.

This is New Jersey, for Chrissake, the most densely populated state in the union. It’s highly industrialized, the home of the pharmaceutical industry, and the place where the people have a hard edge and take no bullshit. It’s the home of the “real” Tony Sopranos of the world.

So, what’s all this stuff about farookin’ GOATS?

Well, it turns out that the state is actively encouraging New Jersey’s farmers (yeah, we actually have some of them) to raise goats in order to satisfy the increasing demand for goat meat. This demand has been fueled by the influx of immigrants form places such as Greece, Mexico, Puerto Rico,, and Jamaica, where goat meat is popular. Asians and Mexicans apparently also like the stuff. Currently most goat meat is imported in from Australia.

The state’s encouragement comes in the form of a $31,000 federal grant to encourage more farmers to raise goats. (Our tax dollars at work!) We even now have a “New Jersey Meat Goat Association,” (How would you like to attend that convention?), which will no doubt figure out creative ways to spend the $31,000 that American citizens were kind enough to pony up for this most important national cause.

I had thought that New Jersey’s slaughterhouses specialized in chopping mob bosses up in bite-sized pieces, but they must also know how to slaughter goats, because Texas (currently the biggest goat meat producing state) and New Jersey together process fifty percent of the nation’s goat meat. The meat retails for approximately $3.50 per pound and, although it is higher in cholesterol than beef, it is less fatty (so they say), which also helps accounts for its reported popularity.

The good news is that goats apparently shit significantly less than cows, and they breed faster. I feel better about this already.

New Jersey goat meat. You really can’t make this shit up.