New Sparky Chronicle Logo, Said to Impart More of a Masculine Look Photo of Sparky with a Frosty Fizz Cola and Crunchy Critters Candy Bar A Website Chronicling the Day to Day Struggles of a Stuffed Animal Who Believes He's Alive!

Home

All Travel
Train & Yard
Adventures
Accidents
Inventions
Food Page
Photos
About Sparky
FAQ's
Contact Me
Bike Stories
D-I-Y Page
Click Below!!
to see Sparky's Newest Invention:
"Banana Holder"
 
which was added on
February 5th, 2006

Check it Out!!
Dramatic representation of a perfect FAQ heading!
Q.:  How do they get a steam train locomotive started after the fire has gone out?

A.:  They fill the fireplace in the locomotive with coal and get the water boiler full of water.  Then they get one of those noisy, smoky pickup trucks and push the locomotive along the tracks until it starts, jest like you start one of those noisy, smoky pickups when the battery burns out.  You should never pull a train to get it started, cuz sometimes when it starts, it will speed up reel fast and could acktually run over that noisy, smoky pickup before you know it

Q.: Are you guys Teddy Bears or Stuffed Animals?Sparky showing off his new red sweater he got for Christmas, 2002

A.: To answer this question, we must first go back in time before there actually were any Teddy Bears or Stuffed Animals. 

The story of the origin of Teddy Bears would seem to be when this feller Teddy Roosevelt was the President of the United States.  His reel name was "Theodore," but "Teddy" was easier for most folks to say back then.  Some other guys and him went hunting in some wild place like Yellowstone or somewhere like that, and there was this here little bear sleeping on the grass and having a reel good time.  The other fellers told Teddy, "There's a wild bear, go ahead and shoot him!"

Teddy din't think that would be very sporting, cuz the poor little bear was asleep, and anyhow, it was jest a little bear, so it wouldn't have been very impressive to show off back in town, so Teddy told them other fellers that he would noDrawing of Teddy Beart shoot such a cute bear.

When the story got around back in town, everybuddy started calling that bear a "Teddy Bear."  Pretty soon a toy manufacturer that made dolls, made a little stuffed bear, and in order to sell lots of them, they called it a "Teddy Bear."

Back then Teddy bears didn't have no clothes that fit them, so all of them jest went around naked and were cold all the time.  Then pretty soon some girls found out that doll clothes would fit them pretty good, except that Teddy Bears are mostly guys, and us guys don't like to go around wearing girl clothes.

Then after a while some doll clothes factories started making Teddy Bear clothes.

Just then some folks got tired of all the Teddy Bears and wanted some other kinds of animals, so, of course, those first stuffed animals were dogs, cuz dogs are cooler than cats, and look reel good as stuffed animals.  (Eventually, they started making stuffed cats, whales, possums, coyotes, and lots of other kinds of stuffed animals).

Getting back to us guys...technically, we're all stuffed animals, except that some of the fellers was originally Teddy Bears, but cuz in our family, we're exter smart, we decided to call ourselves, "Hound Dogs."  We even have a brother, named Darrell, who used to be a cat when he first left the stuffed animal store, but we kept working with him and eventually helped him to get rid of his "Cattitude" and change it into an "Attitude," so now he's pretty cool, but he never assimilated very good, so he lives up North with our cousin Ralph, and there are also some other cats up there.  Ralph is a great big dog, who knows how to keep cats under control, but sometimes it makes him end up in the corner.

I hope I answered your question about Teddy Bears and Stuffed Animals.

Another cool thing about being either a Teddy Bear or stuffed animal is that now they make lots of cool clothes that fit us, as you ken see by the pitcher above.  I still have my super hero costume on underneath it, but in the winter time, us Teddy Bears and Stuffed animals still get pretty cold, regardless of what the scientists say about global warming.

 Return to Home     Return to TopTuna Halper, also called a garbage can.

Q.: What is "Tuna Helper?"

A.: The only "Tuna Helper" I know of is the garbage can we have out in the garage.

Q.: Howcum you're so smart? You don't even have a real brain?

A.: That's why I'm so smart. I have a foam rubber brain. A real brain gets a lot of its thinking power wasted worrying about things and it gets full of dirt and stuff. With a foam rubber brain, when it gets too full, you jest rinse it out with water and when it dries it's all ready to go again. You have to wait till it's all dry or it works like a record that's turning reel slow and it might take a hour to think about if the sun is in your eyes or not, and by then the sun will be moved over and not in your eyes anymore.

Some fellers that live at our house got made with cotton brains, and the trubble with that is that their brains get full of lint after a while and if you try to rinse it out, there goes all the lint, and they also then think like a slow record all the time, and it gets worse with each bath. That's why I'm reel glad that I have a rubber brain.

Course, a feller could get a operation to install a rubber brain, but there's always a risk that it might get put in upside down or sideways and then you would have trubble looking at things cuz that's how they would look.
Return to Top

Q.: Why does the wind blow sometimes, while other times it's not blowing?

A.: I've noticed that sometimes when it's either reel hot or reel cold is when the wind starts blowing the worst.  The reason for this is that all of the trees get uncomfortable and their leaves start to move to get a little fresh air, and the more they move, the more they make the wind start to blow.  After a while, the branches start wiggling cuz the leaves are wiggling reel bad, and pretty soon all the trees in the area are wiggling, and that's what makes the wind blow.

We know this is a fact by noticing that in New York City, where there aren't hardly no trees, the wind never blows there, except when the trees in Central Park start wiggling and waving reel fast, and make so much wind that some of it races up and down the streets, and the tall buildings make the little bit of wind seem like a lot more than is really there.

You can always know that the wind is not blowing jest by watching the trees in your yard.  If none of the leaves are wiggling and the branches are still, you'll never find it to be a windy day, and the trees are happy so they're not making any wind.
Return to Top

Q.: Doesn't it get boring being a stuffed animal and sitting around all day?

A.: No way! When we stay home there's about a thousand channels to watch on TV, and most of the programs are aimed specially at us guys with rubber brains, so we have a great time! We scoot around and get into things all day long, but we gotta be reel careful to put things back the way they were when the reel people left for work. Some days one of us gets to go to work and earn a penny a day for watching that no bad guys steel the car. That's also cool cuz we get to get out and see what's going on around town.Hiram sitting on the Brooklyn Bridge

Some of us also get to go on vacation, but jest 4 at a time so the car don't get too crowded. One time the big boss hound "Hiram" got to go into New York City and he rode on a bus, then a subway, then a nother subway, then he got to sneek across the Brooklyn Bridge hiding in a paper bag, and got his picture took by a guy from Japan. We also took this pitcher with our camera. I think the guy was gonna give us a copy of his pitcher, so the next time we go there we'll have to look around for him. After the Brooklyn Bridge deal, he got to ride on one of those open top buses but it started to rain and they went downstairs into the basement of the bus. Hiram said it musta got hit by a torpedo cuz it started leaking in water from everything like one of those boats named after a sandwich, a submarine, I think, so he was glad he was then in a plastic bag and din't get wet. Then they came back to the motel all safe and dry.

One day when I was working a reel squirrel jumped on the front window of the car and was peeking in and I jumped up right in his face, and he almost had a heart attack. It's good that he din't reely have a heart attack, cuz he din't have one of those button thingys that the guy on TV has so that every time he has a heart attack he jest pushes the button and the ambulance comes for him. That poor guy had seventeen or 13 heart attacks jest the other night one one channel alone, so maybe he needs to change hospitals or doctors cuz they don't seem to be able to fix him up.
Return to Top    
Return to Home

Q.: What can you tell me about vending machines? They all seem so confusing and complicated.Drawing of Vending Machine where a feller can climb on in and pick out what he wants, then pay what he thinks it's worth.

A.: I know what you mean. I have studied these devices for a long time and have learned a lot about them. The first thing I learned was that the instructions were written by at least 18 or 14 different people at different times. Then each one of them tries to make their version work, but there boss gets in the middle of it and tries to make his idea work, then somebuddy else finally makes the sign and does it there way, and it is really hard to figger out what they are trying to say.

Frinstance, every time we travel and try to take a subway or other kind of train where you buy a ticket from some machine then get on the train without talking to nobuddy first. The machine asks you to pay different quantities of money if you're going one way and a different quantity if you're going the other way. If you perfer to just go a slightly different way the machine don't tell you how, cuz I guess everybuddy knows. But if you try to guess and you guess wrong, the cop with a cowboy gun might look at your ticket then decide to just shoot up the train car and throw you out the door into the mud. I never actually saw that, but I overheard two homeless guys talking about how that had happened to them.

My brother Hiram remembers how when they were in the subway in New York they was trying to interpret what the lady inside the ticket machine was saying, and he din't think she knew what she was saying either, cuz they finally had to call a cop to figger out which ticket to buy. Then the lady din't have enough money to change the $50.00 bill, so the cop had to dig out some of his money and make change so the subway lady could afford to have enough change after figgering out which tickets the cop had said to sell to them. If I had been there I woulda pulled out my gun and brandished it for a while to get her to pay attenshun.

Anyways, the other thing that is hard to figger out is a telephone that's outside on a 7-Eleven store or in one of those little buildings where Superman changes his clothes. Some of them don't take no money so you have to stick in some sort of business card or something so the lady will let you call somebuddy. I saw a couple of homeless guys get mad at it once and they din't have no business card so they was trying to get it to take a screwdriver. I din't think screwdrivers was good to use for money, but they kept trying to put that screwdriver into that phone even using a rock to pound it in, but in the end they still din't get to make no phone call and there screwdriver got stuck so they lost it also.

The way I avoid dealing with vending machines is to jest go to where there are reel people to tell you to give them your money. Like the guy in the taxi I saw on TV, he jest said, "Yo, Mac, gimme ten bucks." That makes it jest reel easy to understand. The only other confusing thing is that they talk reel funny in New York. Frinstance, when Mac asked the taxi driver how he knew his name was Mac, he said that he had jest guessed. So then Mac said, "Well, then, just guess who's gonna get your tip." Then the taxi driver got reel mad and tore out of there.

The kind of vending machine that I like reel good is one of those with the great big door that lets little guys like me climb up in there and help myself. That way I can jest figger out how much a candy bar or bag of tater chips looks like it should cost then I ken jest leave the money inside and get my own stuff.

I hate those machines that sell you newspapers. If you put in some money you ken jest open the door and take out your paper. I still haven't figgered out why you have to take those papers that are all the same. It would be better if they had them all assorted so you could get a variety.
Return to Top    
Return to Home

Q.: How come you mespelled the word "Chronicle" in the masthead of your web page?

A.: The same reason you misspelled the word "mespelled," cuz I'm just as iggerent as you!
Return to Top

Q.: How does a ceiling fan work? 

A.: It's reel easy. You jest load it up with as many of your friends as you can find and they have to hang on reel tight. Then somebuddy turns it on and it goes faster and faster till, one-by-one everybuddy falls off, and the last one to fall off is the winner. Frinstance, in the bottom photo, Sparky was the last one to fall off! (Click on photos for larger view).

Another thing you should know is why it is also called a "Hound-Go-Round." That's cuz a lot of us hounds like to climb on it and take a ride, sometimes even when a contest isn't going on, and somebuddy turns the switch on and off so it don't get to going too fast and make one of the little guys get sick. Sometimes if you're reel fast you ken reach over and turn the little switch and make it go backwards and it's reel cool!  NOTE: No Hound-Go-Rounds were damaged during the filming of this contest.
Return to Top       
Return to Home     Return to Vacation

Hound Go Round Contest
CAUTION: Don't do this at home. We are perfessionals & know how to do it safely!
Sparky flying off of Hound Go Round
Photo of Rug Mower, also known as a "Vackume Cleaner"Q.: What can you tell us about something called a "Vacuum Cleaner?" 

A.: You must be referring to a "Vakume Cleaner."  Most people who know a lot about household appliances call it a "Rug Mower," cuz it works zaktly like a lawn mower or a snow mower. It has some little blades that go around reel fast to cut off the pieces of lint and knock out any cooties that are walking around on the rug. Then a little jet airplane engine that makes a lot of noise sucks them up and throws them into a bag that gets thrown out in the trash when it's full of lint and banged up cooties.

It makes a lot of noise cuz the guy that invented it was named Sir Reginald Vakume Cleaner, and the first one he made was reel quiet, but nobody would buy it cuz it din't sound very powerful, even though he showed how it would pull nails out of wood boards. That's why he put in that noisy jet engine, and people started buying it right away.

The first models ran on steam, but ladies who were gonna mow there rugs got tired of waiting for a train locomotive to come by and let them hook up their hose to the pipe that squirts out steam, so it wasn't very popular. Then Ben Franklin invented lektrik city, so then they jest put in a lektric motor and it was a lot easier to use by hooking the early models up to a kite.

Then some old geezer invented a light bulb and some other geezer hooked houses up to stenshun cords that went to a lektrik making machine and the ladies could then plug in there rug mowers and mow rugs whenever they wanted to as long as the noise din't make there neighbors come around with a gun and shoot the noisy thing.   
Return to Top       
Return to Home

Q.: How does Santa Claws get the toys into your house if you don't have a chimney or smokestack?Santa Claus climbing down the chimney 

A.: You probably mean "Santa Claus." (I hope your not a cat, cuz a cat would probably spell it "Claws," and I don't like answering any questions for no cats). Anyway, that's mostly an old story told by people who don't reely know how he does it. Jest remember that he's reel old and also fat, so he wouldn't fit down very many chimneys anyway.

What he reely does is, since he invents all kinds of cool things it wouldn't be very hard for him to invent a machine that squirts magic gas into the lock on your front door and it then opens and he can quickly scoot in and out and put the presents under the tree and eat up all the cookies and milk you left for him. I always leave him chocolate milk and I get more things than a lot of other people I talk to.

Frinstance, my cousin Ralph, who lives about 10 miles away from my house, kinda on the way we go when we go to Chicago, left Santa some Orange Juice and Pretzels....Yukkk. No wonder he jest got one of those black rocks that they used to put in the fire on them old Smoke Trains!  
Return to Top        Return to Home

Sparky shown with his favorite candy and cola.Q.: I have been trying to find Frosty Fizz Cola and Crunchy Critters Candy at the store and nobody ever heard of either one. Where can I get them? 

A.: There's no such products. Originally it was a pitcher of me with a can of a popular Root Beer and a popular Candy Bar, but the manufacturers wouldn't pay me 3 cents for advertising, so I erased their names off of the products. If they start sending me money, then I'll probably start telling people there products are my favorite, becuz if they was sending me some money there products akchully would be my favorites, specially if they was to send me some free samples to drink and eat and share with my friends.   
Return to Top       
Return to Home

Q.: What are those funny letters they have somewhere at the bottom of a page on cartoons, usually MCMXLVI or something like that?

A.: Those are called Italian (Pronounced Eye-Talian) Numbers. They was invented a long time ago in Italy cuz they din't have no need to do a lot of counting back then.

The "I" means the same as the number 1. I think it was cuz when somebuddy went to get some spaghetti it was jest in a pile in a big basket, so he would jest grab a handful and point 1 finger in the air and that meant that he was buying one handful of spaghetti. If he wanted 2 handfuls of spaghetti, then he had to hold up one finger on each hand. That was spelled as "II" or 2. If he needed 3 handfuls of spaghetti he would need to bring along somebuddy to help out cuz he would be out of hands.

Then came some people who wanted to count higher, like guys in jail frinstanHow prisoners Write 5ce. A lot of them had to count a lot higher than three or the number of fingers and toes, so somebuddy invented a way to make 4 lines and another one across to hold them all together, and that meant 5. Two of those meant 10 and so on.

Then some clever Italian inventer invented them Italian Numbers to make things easier. He left "I" to mean 1, "II" to mean 2, "III" to mean 3, but then it got hard to read a lot of I's, so he invented "V" to mean 5. After a lot of hard work and he got a headache, so he gave up inventing 4, so somebuddy else at the invention factory was in a hurry to get done and go home, so he suggested to jest make it "IV", which meant 5 minus 1 equals 4.

After that some others invented other letters as they needed to count higher and higher cuz some families was getting large and needed more and more handfuls of spaghetti.

Those first guys was jest using sticks to make a I and a V, so then somebuddy invented a X using the same 2 sticks that also made a V. The "X"  was used to say 10. Then they got to 50, so somebuddy jest turned the sticks a little to make a "L" and they were pretty much done with the limit of what a feller could do with sticks.

Pretty soon somebuddy needed to count to 100, so it took somebuddy reel good to invent a "C" that they used to spell 100. He had to carve it out of a couple of crooked sticks. (Remember, back then they din't do very much writing, so there jest weren't very many letters lying around, and everybuddy had to make there own if they were busy with a project that required any letters. And, since Italy was civilized, they din't have no more dirt floors in there houses any more, so they couldn't jest write letters in the dirt on the floor).

At about the same time, somebuddy came running in and needed to count to 500, and since it was late in the day, somebuddy jest turned that C around and put one of those little I sticks on it and made a "D"  which they called 500. Then one of the smarter guys decided to take all the little I sticks and made a "M" which they decided to call 1,000. Then all of them quit and went out for spaghetti cuz they were done inventing them Italian Numbers and now they could get back to eating and sleeping like they liked to do.

Then they decided to put them Italian Numbers on all the important buildings in town to mean the date they was built. Since nobuddy knew how to count dates when they were built, they jest guessed at it, cuz it wasn't extremely important back then. In fact, nothing at all was very important back then, cept that there was enough spaghetti to go around.

So, pretty soon they got all the buildings done getting there numbers put up and they once again ran out of things to do.

That's when somebuddy discovered that it was reel hard to add and subtract them numbers. Then another even smarter guy discovered that it was reely hard to multiply them numbers (Dividing wasn't necessary yet, so nobuddy thought about it or invented it yet). Frinstance, if a feller had 121 (CXXI) people coming over for dinner, and they was all bringing a friend, you could either add CXXI plus CXXI to get a total of CCXXXXII, which equaled CCXLII, or 242. It was thought that it would be a lot easier to multiply CXXI times II, but since multiplying hadn't been invented yet, it was very hard to do and required a lot of counting with sticks and buttons, so they jest gave up and had everybuddy bring there own spaghetti.

About that time, there was a feller named Marco Polo who got on a boat and Marco Polo going to the Reel Far East went to the Reel Far East, where folks was used to counting things that there was lots of, cuz most of those people had a lot of camels that they used as horses, and they had to keep track of them all the time, so they invented some special numbers called "Arabic Numbers." These are the numbers we use today. Marco Polo bought a startup kit of those Arabic Numbers for about six bucks and brought them back to Italy and sold them to somebuddy who then started using them instead of them Italian Numbers and all of a sudden he could do all sorts of math without getting no headache or needing a lot of sticks and buttons. (Marco Polo din't buy the startup kit of Arabic letters, though, cuz they looked like snakes and bugs and was reel hard to read). Then finally, somebuddy decided to call them Italian Numbers "Roman Numerals," cuz a lot of old Italians wanted to call them Italian Numbers, but Rome was the biggest city so the big bosses there got their way.Arabic Sign "Bananas 3 for a Dollar"
These here are Arabic Letters. It says, "Bananas 3 for a Dollar."

While he was on his trip, Marco Polo also went to Egypt, thinking that there might be some even easier numbers that he could buy, but he soon found out that they din't do too much counting there cuz they was afraid of mummies that was always coming out of the ground and chasing people around. That's why they invented pyramids, so somebuddy could go to the top and watch out for mummy uprisings. Also, the sides of the pyramids was originally steep and smooth, and mummies can't climb up on them cuz their bandaids are reel slippery.  If any mummies start coming up the stairs, they can roll big rocks down on them and knock them back into the sand where they live. That might sound far fetched, but that's what I heard on a TV show a while back, and it reely does make sEgyptian Sign that says, "No Camel Parking"ense, cuz why else would they make a pyramid?
These here are some Egyptian Letters. The sign says, "No Camel Parking."

Return to Top        Return to Home

Reuters Picture of Donkeys hauling "Afghanistan Lumber"Q.: Why are the people in my family complaining about the cost of coffee?

A.: This has to do with the fact that Juan Valdez, who for many years brought all the coffee in the world down from the mountains in South America was starting to get old and was tired of dealing with his donkeys all the time, so he bought a Toyota pickup and traded in them donkeys. The Toyota and Used Donkey dealer sold them to a lumber company in Afghanistan, who uses them for lumber deliveries, as shown in the photo.

Juan quickly found out that the donkeys found their own food by eating weeds, but the pickup needs gasoline and oil, which the Toyota pickup can't jest find out in the yard and fill up fer free, so that added to his cost of hauling the coffee down the mountain. Since it costs him more, he has to charge more for his coffee, so the folks that acktually drink the coffee jest have to pay a little more for it.

Jest looking at them donkeys, I figger that they're not too happy neither, none of them is smiling. And, it looks like somebuddy else already ate up all the good grass.

Q.: How can they produce turkeys for just $3.00? Don't turkeys eat more than that just to get fat?

A.: I know what you mean. Just before Thanksgiving we went in the car when the old folks went to a park to take a bike ride, and there was some gooses all over the place, even looking in the car at us guys like they wanted to eat us up or something.

Then a couple of days later we saw in the paper that one of the big stores had turkeys on sale for $3.00. Now, I'm not gonna point no paw anywhere, but the next time we went to the park there wasn't no more of them gooses anywhere.

Them gooses probably jest went somewhere else to find some greener grass..

 

Home

All Travel

Train & Yard

Adventures

Accidents

Inventions

Bike Stories

Photos

About Sparky

D-I-Y Page

Contact Me

FAQ's

Copyright (C) 2004 by James J. Meagher