By KATHY KISH
OK folks, I’m waiting for some letters. In the meantime, I have come across two questions of my own in the past week.
First, when I went to a local home improvement store to buy cinder blocks to repair my garage wall, I asked several of the always-more-than-helpful employees there if they knew how much a cinder block weighs, so I could figure out how many my car could handle at a time.
Apparently that is not common knowledge. I needed about 27 blocks. So judging just from the feel of them, I decided they seemed to be about 25 pounds each and I decided that 12 of them would weight about 300 pounds, which might equal the weight of having a couple of people in my backseat. I decided to go with that many and come back for the rest later.
So my questions were: 1. How much does an average cinder block really weigh? 2. How much weight can an average car handle?
I searched the Internet, but only found two references to the weight of cinder blocks — one from a person who noted that there are several sizes and weights of the blocks, and another was a quote from the movie “Old School,” which referred to the weight of a cinder block in reference to a hazing ritual. People who saw the movie know what I’m talking about. Anyway, the guy in the movie says a cinder block weighs 30 pounds.
Then I went ahead and just weighed one of the cinder blocks and found that according to my scales, a cinder block “corner block” is indeed 30 pounds. But then my scales are a little off, so it could be a pound or two more or less. But since I found that quote from “Old School,” I’m going with that.
Now, for the next question. How do you find out how much weight your car can handle? Well, it finally occurred to me to look at all of those little informational tags they put on the inside of your car door and see if it mentions it there. It does! It does! I don’t know about everybody’s car, but mine recommends a weight limit of 904 pounds.
So, if I had loaded 27 of those 30-pound blocks into my car at once, then added my body, plus all of the junk — such as books, newspapers, fast food wrappers and other things I routinely keep in my car — ummm ... well, let’s just say it would have been over the weight limit and might have been really bad for my springs and motor. So there you have it. Never presume that your car can handle all of the cinder blocks that might be able to be fit into it.
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And my next question involved a school folder I found at the store, which features a photo on the front of an owl with a cat’s face. It looks very real and even has an informational section inside which tells a little story about how this “Meowl” was discovered in January in Billings, Mont.
According to the folder, “A young boy heard cries coming from a tree on his ranch. Initially thinking that it was a hapless kitten, the sounds actually came from the cat-like ‘Meowl’ noises that gave this animal its name.”
The piece goes on to say that “Meowls are independent, yet curious creatures. They have been suspected of stealing balls of string or yarn for nest building or simply to play with. Although they are distantly related to owls, Meowls can’t turn their heads all the way around. In fact, Meowls can’t turn their heads at all — they have no necks. To look in other directions, they have to waddle around one way or another so they’re facing the direction in which they want to look.”
Having a keen interest in the animal world, I was pretty sure there was no such thing as a Meowl, and was well aware that miraculous things can be done with such computer image-manipulating programs as Photoshop.
But because of the notations about the so-called animal, I just had to check it out to make sure. I mean, we all know that there is very little chance that a cat and an owl would ever get romantically involved, and even so, they probably wouldn’t be capable of producing offspring.
But it is possible that some owl was born with a deformity in which it didn’t have a beak and the resulting face resembled that of a cat, isn’t it? And why, oh, why, would somebody print all of that bogus information on a folder meant for children to use for filing their school papers?
Well, needless to say, all of my Internet searches using the word Meowl, or expressions such as “cat-like owl,” “owl cat,” “cat owl,” etc. came up with nothing, so I did a search for the name on the folder’s trademark, “Human Descent,” and sure enough, at www.humandescent.com there is a whole slew of admittedly digitally manipulated photos in which various animal breeds are combined.
Very few are as cute as the Meowl, and, in fact, many are downright hideous looking. But you can get posters, T-shirts and more with crosses between tigers and gerbils, dogs and penguins, or any other type of animal crossbreed you might imagine.
So I guess we aren’t due for hear purring from the skies anytime soon. Darn!
— Kathy
By Kathy Kish for the Daily Telegraph. If you have a question of general interest, no matter how weird or wacky, write to “Ask Kathy,” Bluefield Daily Telegraph, P.O. Box 1599, Bluefield, WV 24701; or e-mail her at Kathy_kish@comcast.net.
