Daily Dirt: Hey, buddy … how many rodent hairs in your pasta?

Daily Dirt for Saturday, March 26, 2022

I find it hard to believe Walt Frazier is 77, but more about that in a minute. Welcome to today’s three thoughts and Vol. 243 of The Daily Dirt.

1. Today is a time for self-reflection. How many of the following things are you guilty of doing or saying?And be honest.

• You meet someone on the street, in a restaurant or at the supermarket, you wave and call them “buddy” because you cannot remember their name and hope that something triggers your memory during what you hope is a very short conversation.
• Pushing the elevator button multiple times when once would suffice.
• Reading the directions on a box of food, tossing it in the wastebasket and then having to retrieve it moments later because you had forgotten at least one of the steeps required to make the meal in question.
• Accidentally sending a text to the wrong person and then trying to joke your way through a follow-up message.
• Eating a family-size bag of chips by yourself.
• Using the bathroom at a friend’s house and looking inside the medicine cabinet.
• Offering fake laughter to a friend’s not-so-funny story or joke.
• Buying a week’s worth of fresh veggies and vowing to “eat better,” only to not eat any of them and eventually throwing them all a way a week later.
• Checking the internet for your “symptoms” when not feeling well, then convincing yourself you are at death’s door.

Personally, I’m guilty of them all, except one. I have never looked inside someone’s medicine cabinet.

2. Here are some strange-but-true facts:

• Russia did not classify beer as alcoholic until 2011. That may explain a lot.
• Toilet seats are cleaner than your cell phone. (In a study by the University of Arizona, cell phones were found to have 10 times more germs than a toilet seat that was tested in the experiment.)
• Three maggots in your tomatoes is OK. (The FDA says three maggots are a permissible amount in a 28-ounce can of tomatoes. Wow.)
• A 16-ounce box of pasta is legally allowed to contain nine rodent hairs. So take a close look before you chomp down on that fettuccine.
• The Cuban Bee hummingbird weighs less than a penny.
• A giraffe cleans its ears with its tongue. (I had a friend who once did that.)

3. Here’s some more happy birthday wishes heading into the weekend:

• Former NBA great Walt “Clyde” Frazier blows out 77 candles on Tuesday. The former fashion plate of the NBA is still going strong, working as a TV analyst for New York Knicks games.
• Actor Warren Beatty will be 85 on Wednesday. He rose to stardom in “Bonnie and Clyde” in 1966 but really has not enjoyed much success since.
• Actress Rhea Perlman turns 74 on Thursday. We remember her best as Carla on “Cheers.”
• Former pro quarterback and current NFL analyst Tony Romo will be 42 on Friday. J. Robert Gough is his biggest fan.
• If the soulful Marvin Gaye were still with us, he would have been 83 on Saturday. One of the premier pop singers of all-time, Gaye is probably best known for his 1968 monster hit “I Heard It Through The Grapevine.” It was his first No. 1 song, staying atop the Billboard charts for five weeks.

Steve Thought O’ The Day
Steve admits he is confused about how nine rodent hairs are permitted in pasta.

Steve Eighinger writes daily for Muddy River News. He has eaten many family-sized bags of chips by himself, but do you think he’s ever bought a vegetable (unless he was buying it for someone else)?