The Mad Bull’s Blog, Version 3

Did you watch the lunar eclipse last night? I watched some of it. My generator seemed to think that we ought to watch it, I think, because it decided to conk out just as the eclipse started, which left us with nothing else to do, so yeah, Natty, M’Buthelezi, MBJr. and I trekked outside unto the front porch/verandah/step thing to sit and watch the eclipse. (Based on the front porch/verandah/steps’ size, I don’t know what the appropriate name for it ought to be… )

Anyway, I couldn’t help but notice the differences in the way I learned about eclipses and the way that MBJr. learned about them. Click the link below to continue…

When I was somewhere in the region of about seven years of age, Sixty Five explained all about how eclipses worked… we were living at West Kings House Drive at the time and one night, I was looking at this model of the earth that we had, a big globe with all the countries mapped out on it, and I was asking him questions about the different countries and stuff like that. One thing led to another and he went and got a flashlight. He turned off the lights in the room and turned on the
flashlight and then used his fist to simulate the moon. He went through how a solar eclipse involved the moon passing between the earth and the sun, and thus blocking the suns light, and then he went through the lunar eclipse, where the earth got between the sun and the moon, thus casting the moon in the shadow of the earth. That lesson from my father has stayed with me from that day to this…

This is not how MBJr. learned about eclipses the first time though… He was watching “The Land Before Time” DVD a few days ago, and we have nothing else to watch but DVDs nowadays, so he’s been going through all the menu options on all the DVDs.

Somewhere on that DVD, they went into a discussion about eclipses, and in a fair amount of detail too. When the eclipse started and we drew MBJr.s attention to it, he wasn’t impressed. He knew all about this stuff already, he declared, he saw it on the “Land Before Time” DVD.

Now I learned about it at the age of seven, and he learned about it at the age of four, so there was a difference in what we each retained from our respective lessons. He was talking about the eclipse to us and he said something wrong, and so I decided to imitate Sixty Five’s lesson as best as I could and go over it with the little man.

He didn’t think he needed the refresher much, however, and it was quite difficult getting him to just listen, because he had heard it all already from the DVD! He was more listening to me with a view towards correcting anything that I might say that was “wrong” in his opinion. Kids are such know-it-alls, aren’t they, when they have learned about something before.

Have you noticed that they place a huge amount of credence in the first account they get about a particular topic as well? For instance, he didn’t want to believe me as readily as he would have normally because the DVD had said something else, or at least, as best as he could remember, it had.

At the same time, when I am the first one to have told him about something and then Natty starts to discuss it with him, he tells her that he knows all about it, and that he learned it from his Dad, and he behaves in a similar fashion, disagreeing with what she says and quoting me as the source of authority on the issue…

Anyway, I am not really going to make any particular point on this, its just something I noticed and was thinking about last night… Eventually I got what I was trying to tell MBJr. across, and then I went and topped up the generator with oil and turned it back on. Once I got that going, I lost all of his attention as he went back to watching the latest DVD he has, “Daddy Day Care“.

The generator is burning a lot of oil nowadays, for some reason. It basically burns off the oil to a point where it is too low for it to continue running, and it does this within a three hour window, can you believe it? When this happens, I just top it up and restart it. Its not ideal, but hopefully things will continue like this until I get it to a place that specialises in repairing generators, or until the electricity is turned back on, whichever comes first.

Oh, I got a little email joke that I am going to lay on you as well… here you go :

What Makes 100%?

From a strictly mathematical viewpoint it goes like this:

What Makes 100%? What does it mean to give MORE than 100%? Ever wonder about those people who say they are giving more than 100%? We have all been to those meetings where someone wants you to give over 100%. What makes up 100% in life? How about achieving 103%?

Here’s a little mathematical formula that might help you answer these questions:

If:
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z is represented as:
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26.

Then:

A-B-I-L-I-T-Y
1+2+9+12+9+20+25 = 78%

H-A-R-D-W-O-R-K
8+1+18+4+23+15+18+11 = 98%

And

K-N-O-W-L-E-D-G-E
11+14+15+23+12+5+4+7+5 = 96%

But look at the difference

A-T-T-I-T-U-D-E
1+20+20+9+20+21+4+5 = 100%

However the real answer lies with;

B-U-L-L-S-H-1-T
2+21+12+12+19+8+9+20 = 103%

AND, look how far ass kissing will take you!

A-S-S-K-I-S-S-I-N-G
1+19+19+11+9+19+19+9+14+7 = 118%

So, one can conclude with mathematical certainty that whilst Ability on it’s own isn’t enough, and Hard work and Knowledge will get you close, Attitude will get you there.

It’s the Bullshit and the Ass kissing that will put you over the top.

TTYL.

Tags: Family //