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IN CASE ANY OF YOU WERE ASKING ABOUT THE RATHER CRAZY-LOOKING SCANNING IMAGE ON THE SIDE OF THIS BLOG OVER RECENT DAYS, such is the Quick Response (QR) code for Web-enabled 3G and 4G mobile phones (including, I can assume, Blackberrys and Apple iPhones) equipped with the free Kaywa QR Reader to access The Exaggerator ... and, in its turn, your being able to read this blog "on the go."

Which, in any case, continues the mission of The Exaggerator to constantly look for fresh and fascinating ways to serve you, its readers, as well as attract attention on the Information Stuporbahn. (In this instance, by going beyond traditional desktop or laptop computers as the only means to stay abreast of what goes on here.)

(And to get a free code for your own weblog or website, click here.)

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IN THE NEARLY MONTH NOW THAT I'VE BEEN ON TWITTER AS ADJUNCT TO THIS BLOG, I have reached the point where the ratio of Tweeters that I follow (160) to such as follow moi (143) is an enviable 1.12.

Now tell me this isn't impressive, especially when you have the likes of Ricky Martin, Senor La Vida Loca "himself," among those following The Exaggerator in Twitter. (But then again, you get your share of such as use Twitter to push deceptive, fraudulent or misleading schemes or even advance hard-wired Zealotry and True Belief, which I take the liberty of blocking or, in especially extreme cases, report for "spam" activity.)

Others that happen to make it a habit of following me in Twitter include such illustrious names as Pizza Hut, Culver's, Malt-O-Meal, Maxine (as in Hallmark's Shoebox Greetings line), Buzzflash.com, Tetley Tea USA, Kajeet, Tanger Outlet Centres, Media Matters for America (and its Media Matters Action Network), the NFL's New England Patriots, Blogthings.com, the Canadian Pacific Railway, CREDO Mobile, The Jim Henson Company and Ripley International (as in Ripley's "Believe It or Not!").

(As reminder, the Twitter adjunct can be found here ... as well as off to the side of the page, howbeit with the most recent Tweets.)

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TRY NOT TO LAUGH, FOLKS, WHEN I MENTION THAT TODAY IS--(DRUMROLL)--WORLD TOILET DAY! Which, in case you ask, is intended to call attention to public health and sanitation issues caused by lack of access to proper toilet facilities, especially in the developing world where Chic Sale seems to remain the rule more than the exception.

And among the interesting (and yet shocking) facts organisers expect you to learn in connexion is that more children across Africa die every year from diarrhea than from malaria, HIV/AIDS or malnutrition.

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YOU JUST HAVE TO WONDER IF THE INTELLECT, LET ALONE BRAINS, OF THE AVERAGE "TEA PARTY" SUNSHINE SOLDIER AND ZEALOT, coming as he does from a Lower Working Class background so lacking in realistic job or career skills to the point of being considered "unsuitable for retraining" (and yet hard-wired in seeing dependency upon State Charity to be one with Moral Lapse, never mind studies disproving the connexion), is on the same level as a certain Stretch Snodgrass on the Old-Time Radio sitcom Our Miss Brooks, if you're fond of the genre.

(Snodgrass, basically, was more into sports than scholastics, as witness his usually being the single-worst student in the Madison High English class of the namesake character, Miss Connie Brooks, as portrayed by Eve Arden.)

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AND SPEAKING OF OLD-TIME RADIO, WHICH HAPPENS TO BE AMONG MY LISTENING INTERESTS ON SATELLITE RADIO (THANKS TO ADVICE OF MEIN INNKEEPER FRIEND), those of you who still remember the classic Suspense episode "Sorry, Wrong Number" (repeated no less than seven times "by popular request", and every time starring Agnes Moorhead) might find equally gripping the "Long Distance" episode of The Chase, an NBC Radio dramatic anthology as aired between 1952 and 1953 whose stories involved "race-against-time" plots and scenarios in the vein of conflict between Hunter and Hunted.

In this instance, such involved the desperate attempt of a housewife whose husband was about to be executed for murder trying to contact the judge in the original case about newly-uncovered evidence which confirmed the husband's alibi that he could not have carried out the murder in question, thereby clearing his name ... and this back in the day when calling Long Distance required one's dialing 211 to reach the Long Distance Operator, with plenty of interplay ensuing trying to establish the oh-so-critical connexion between operators in various parts of the country.

(About a year after this episode went to air, Direct Distance Dialing [DDD] would be introduced in a suburban Pittsburgh exchange of the Bell Telephone Company of Pennsylvania, since evolving into Verizon after Bell Atlantic [who had earlier acquired NYNEX] and GTE, a leading independent telephone company, merged. In time, DDD would be rolled out across the country, aided all the more by rural telephone companies adopting dial systems from the mid-1950's on and culminating in the last manual telephonic exchange, Maine's Bryant Pond Telephone Company, being cut over to dial service by the Oxford West Telephone Company in 1983.)

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IN CASE YOU HAVEN'T HEARD, NESTLÉ, THE COUNTRY'S LEADING PUMPKIN CANNERS (MARKETED UNDER THE LIBBY'S BRAND), IS REPORTING that shortages of canning pumpkin caused by unstable weather this past summer cutting into the crop are translating into a more expensive pumpkin pie this Festive Season.

Not to mention supplies of canned pumpkin being quickly depleted across the country, meaning that you may have to drive a little further out of your way to find decent canned pumpkin for that Tradition of Traditions on the holiday dessert table. (And pay more than you normally would, not to mention enduring bedlam and confusion.)

With that prospect in mind, might I suggest considering in lieu mincemeat pie for the holiday dessert ... or that old reliable Southern staple known as pecan pie, known in some parts of Dixie as "Karo Pie" (as in Karo Corn Syrup, who originated the concept in 1933), for which the good people @ Karo have no less than 35 permutations on the basic recipe as are all worth considering. (And you ain't whistling "That's What I Like About the South" for nothing!)

"...and that is is a way."

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