Back in the U.S.A.

[JW Insider]

Yesterday, I was at Wallkill and Warwick. And it wasn't what you might be thinking. It was to take the grandkids (ages 3 & 6) apple picking. When my own children were young, this was an easy thing to do. Load everyone in a car; drive at least 30 miles outside NYC; watch for signs; take your pick of places; end it with a simple hay-ride, and then take home your pick of apples. Now many of the farms that manage these things only take reservations for picking. They charge $40 for a half-bushel. The have expensive vendor stands creating a makeshift food court, a gift shop, a donut shop, a cider shop. The one we ended up at yesterday had about 500 cars when we arrived (and parking for only about 400). And live music. (?!?!)

Not quite the vibe I grew up with.

[TrueTomHarley]

5 hours ago, JW Insider said:

They charge $40 for a half-bushel.

“And I heard a voice as if in the midst of the four living creatures say: “A quart of wheat for a de·narʹi·us, and three quarts of barley for a de·narʹi·us; and how do you like them apples?”

[Mic Drop]

The world has gone insane....

Mundane stuff is being commoditized as never before as people are trying to attribute value to every single small iota of life amidst the foundational cash being devalued like never before in generations.

Stay tuned for more absurdities I'm sure.

Soon we will be asked to post $ in order to make posts online in forums etc.

[Anna]

On 10/16/2022 at 12:56 PM, JW Insider said:

Not quite the vibe I grew up with.

I agree. Things that used to be simple, have been made ridiculously complicated and commercialized. That's why I like the former soviet countries, they haven't caught on to this rubbish yet, or at least they have bigger fish to fry for now.....OR they know they wouldn't get the customers because people aren't stupid enough, yet* 🤪😂 OR, these kind of enterprises are not the best type for money laundering

*they go to grandma's orchard and pick their free apples for free, or pick the apples that grow on trees lining country roads...

 

[TrueTomHarley]

10 hours ago, Anna said:

they go to grandma's orchard and pick their free apples for free, or pick the apples that grow on trees lining country roads...

The gruff German grandma down the road loaded me up with enough pairs from her tree to last weeks. I was just walking by with headphones on, the way I do, and greeted her as she was crossing the street. Turned out she had just returned from giving a load to people there, also. 

My greeting was enough. She pulled me into her yard and made me take some of her pairs. However many I took, it was not enough, and I left with a bag as heavy as I could carry. So I brought them to the congregation get-together where several young children who had never eaten pairs before dove into them, found them delicious, and probably had the runs for a week.

My wife has called on this women before in the course of her ministry. ‘I don’t think she’s interested,’ she says. ‘She’s gruff, but underneath pretty decent.’ So I told her my wife’s verdict, which I agree with. I’ve been back since for more pears and even some apples.

(I should have told her that city-slicker @JW Insiderwould pay her $40 a bag for whatever came off her trees, even $80 if she serenades him with an accordion band.)

[Anna]

11 hours ago, Anna said:

they know they wouldn't get the customers because people aren't stupid enough, yet

I just realised this may sound like I was inferring that JWI is stupid. Of course I don't mean that. If you live in the USA, you don't have much choice, especially not if you don't live close to a gruff German grandma! 

[Anna]

Just now, Anna said:

If you live in the USA, you don't have much choice

Oh dear...now this sounds like I am saying Americans can't help being stupid. I think I've been watching too much Blacklist and I'm beginning to sound like Aram Mojtabai. Those who have watched the show will know what I mean. I should just shut up...

[TrueTomHarley]

10 minutes ago, Anna said:

I just realised this may sound like I was inferring that JWI is stupid. Of course I don't mean that.

Oh, C’mon! Show a little backbone, why don’t you?

7 minutes ago, Anna said:

Oh dear...now this sounds like I am saying Americans can't help being stupid. I think I've been watching too much Blacklist and I'm beginning to sound like Aram Mojtabai.

Next thing you know you’ll be agreeing with that anti-cult whack job Korelov who calls the United States “the spiritual garbage dump of humanity” and who paints Jehovah’s Witnesses foremost in advancing that cause. I distinctly remember in the 70s working with the tract “Jehovah’s Witnesses—Christians or Communists”—designed to counter just the opposite impression, that Witnesses were agents of Russian communism.

https://bitterwinter.org/russia-sensational-revelations-jehovahs-witnesses-prepare-an-anti-putin-coup/

 

[TrueTomHarley]

3 hours ago, TrueTomHarley said:

She pulled me into her yard and made me take some of her pairs.

Um—she made my take some of her pears. Sorry.

[Anna]

5 minutes ago, TrueTomHarley said:

Um—she made my take some of her pears. Sorry.

I thought it looked weird when I was reading it. I kept going back to it thinking this doesn't look right....

The simplest solution evidently didn't occur to me. Now who's stupid 😂

I'm surprised JWI didn't make a joke out of it already

[JW Insider]

1 hour ago, Anna said:

I'm surprised JWI didn't make a joke out of it already

We picked about as many bad apple-related puns as we did apples that day. That's because there's always a cornucopia of corny puns to cope with. They're like low-hanging fruit. I do remember one really dumb "pear" joke I made on the hayride when we passed up the rows of out-of-season pears, and I saw one still on a tree:  I started singing:  ". . . And a Bartlett in a pear tree."  [wrong crowd?]

But I made an unrelated but even odder "pair" joke on the way back home. Unfortunately, it was kind of an off-color joke, for my wife's ears only, that I shouldn't repeat here.

So here goes: 😮

It was based on an actual experience from a couple of days earlier when my wife didn't have the cash at the time to tip the nail salon people and she sent me back there with the tip a couple hours later. I was to find two people, Tina and Lee-Lee, the owner and the "nail-doer," respectively. It was my first time in a nail salon, surrounded by women, and I played up that part of the story when my wife asked me if I had found everyone OK. (Wives won't always admit it, but there is a certain kind of tension when they've just send their husbands into a bevy of women to represent them.)

So all that background of the story had almost nothing to do with the joke. Almost. I thought it would be fun to tell my wife about a certain woman I saw in the nail salon who was just finishing up getting intricate designs put on her nails by the same nail-doer, Lee-Lee, and I had to interrupt them. In excruciating detail I described to my wife how the woman getting her nails done had these extreme upper body elements that reminded me of when Dolly Parton once described her bra with the words, "It's like trying to put 100 pounds of mud in a 50-pound gunny sack." 

But I also mentioned to my wife that, waiting out in front of the salon, was another woman in a car who had almost exactly the same figure, and the same mode of displaying it with a lower-than-low-cut blouse. (Or maybe it was a dress; I don't remember looking.)

I said to myself: I bet that woman in the car is waiting for the same woman I just interrupted. And I'll bet she is going to get in the same car with her. And sure enough, as I was getting back to my own car, that other woman left the salon and got in the car with her, right there in front of the salon.

"How do you think that I was able to predict that this was going to happen?" I asked my by-now-thoroughly-exasperated wife.

Spoiler

Simple. I put two and two together!

 

[TrueTomHarley]

1 hour ago, JW Insider said:

I asked my by-now-thoroughly-exasperated wife.

In a mellow mode, I strolled into a tattoo parlor. Seeing the fellow at work, on the spur of the moment I asked if when one of his trade tattoos an intimate part of the body, whether he gets a charge out of it, or is it just art. 

‘It’s art!’ came the firm rebuke.