Today's Lesson...

Why Not to Annoy Lin after She was Trapped on a Plane

with Baby-Germs and a Woman Eating Something that

Smelled like Feet and Pits and other Corporeal Cavernous Crevices

I recently received this via e-mail (an e-mail address not directly linked to this blog, by the way, so that narrows down the suspects quite a bit):

Mind your own business has sent you a link to a weblog:
For someone who is so damn busy you sure do have alot of time on your hands to be making Commentaries.

Clarification:

It’s called Cut-and-Paste, a combination of basic Windows’ commands allowing one to cut text/pictures/what-have-you (from, say, a text document written the night before from the comfort of your own home) and paste them someplace else (like a dialog box when you have a free second in the day). It’s standard stuff, really. A kindergartner can do it. You should try it some time. I’m sure you can find a first grader to help you out if you have any problems.

A Stranger Sexed my Kitty!

That's it. Just wanted to put that little thought out into the world and see what depravity it unearthed.

But really, the orphans (currently in foster care as I am not a baby-person and would have more than likely accidentally flushed them or something) are officially a boy and girl.

They've currently got a real Flintstone's vibe going - big, bulky boy and teeny, cutesy female.
The only difference is that teeny, cutesy female can beat the formula-fueled snot out of the male. Well, when she's not too busy taking on the dog with the paws bigger than her whole body, that is. My kinda girl!

Viva La Onion Ring!

Actually it should be more like:

Long Live the Onion Ring!

Viva la Listerine!!!

It's a training day, and I made a bad lunch choice this afternoon. Well, not really 'bad' per se. More like 'Downright Mean.' But my love of Onion Rings shall now be quashed!!! Luckily today didn't require any major one-on-one tutoring at a student's desk so offense was kept to a minimum (I hope).

Bad, bad, tasty ring of stinky goodness!

My earliest memories are of being tempted by baskets of golden brown and delicious. It was considered a harmless treat, passed about at family picnics and baseball games, the perfect accompaniment to hamburgers and sunburn. But those smiling faces tempting you to “Take some more; there’s plenty” never want to break the spell of a slow, lazy summer afternoon spent spinning in a pool of cousins and troubling warm spots with Truth and Knowledge and Consequence.

Onion Rings are a gateway drug.

On blustery afternoons, I’d catch myself jonesing for just one more crumbly bit of the perfect combination of crunch and goo. When a fix couldn’t be found, I could be found in all-night convenience store searching in vain for just one more bag of Funyuns, just something to tide me over until a deep-fryer could be located. After a while, Onion Rings just weren’t enough. I needed more. More fun. More Fried. More FIXIN’s. There’s no turning back when you’re buying in bulk and cramming 20 pound bags in a side-by-side’s freezer.

Next came Okra, but instead of helping to curb my fried-food-fixations, it only led to an even more disturbing Ranch dependency. Once I started scrounging money for gallon-size jugs, I knew I was a goner.

After Okra came mushrooms, cauliflower, pickles… Anything that could hold a batter was fair game. To this day, Mounds bars cower in fear.

I’m happy to say that today I’ve got this affliction under control. I no longer see all vegetables as a possible brush with grease fire, and Ranch is solely social fodder. Though I still have minor relapses (Darn you, Whataburger!) I can honestly say that I am mostly tempura-free. I just take it one day at a time (as if 2 or 3 were an option) and whenever a craving strikes I remember my mantra:

Colonel, grant me the Sensibility to accept the things I should not fry,
Common Sense to resist the things I can
And Will-Power to walk the hell away from the Fry-Daddy.

Note to to the Somewhat Uptight: I am in no way making fun of others with more life-threatening or destroying addictions. Those who know me know why I’m free to mock and those who don’t, well it ain’t any of your business anywhoo. :-P

Pope says what...!?!

I'm not going to even try to sort out the political ramifications of speaking against anyone's religion, especially not when there are so many different angles to consider and countless ways to piss someone off. But I will ask blatantly hypothetical questions and be very disgruntled when I don't receive responses.

1. Dear Mr. The Pope:

Why!?! That's it. Just 'Why?' I know all those Vatican file-monkeys are a little behind on the atonements (the last apologetic shout-out went out to all those dissed in the 3rd century or so), but why start some shit that won't even be up for debate on whether or not you should pass a papal "My Bad" until the sun is up for renewal? Yes, the media took a snippet and ran all willy-nilly, but Christ on a Cheez-It, man! What's gonna happen to you? Nuthin' cause the pope-mobile's all gassed up and fitted with rocket-launchers, and you've got billions who'll sacrifice their pew-flattened behinds in the name of your silly hat alone. What about all the innocents, the good and even not so good christians and catholics and what-have-you's, that get to deal with the aftermath?


2. To Anyone Planning Genocide Because Some Old Coot had One too Many Communion-Margaritas:

If someone calls you “idiot” you don’t run with scissors off a cliff into a pool of laser-touting sharks, right? If someone says you’re “smelly” you don’t boycott soap and deodorant to demonstrate how mistaken they are. So if someone says you’re violent, why do a butt-load of things to prove them right? Better yet, send the offending party a nice fruit basket with a card and shame them into submission.

Scenario:
Joe Pope: Steve’s a poopie-head, and I don’t want to be his friend any more. I’m gonna tell everyone he wets the bed and smells like monkey tits.

Bad Solution:
Steve Islam: Joe Pope said what!?! Well, that does it. I’m gonna punch him and all his friends in the box and burn his clubhouse to the ground.

Good Solution:
Joe Pope: Hey, someone sent me tropical fruit. That rocks! Wait, there’s a card.

‘Dear Joe,

I’m sorry you’re such a twat-waffle,

but you can kiss my peace-loving ass.

Signed, Steve

P.S. Enjoy the fruit, you intolerant twit.’

Well, that told me. I’m just another in a long line of bully’s who only pick on others because they secretly despise their domineering father. I'm going to drown my shame in a bowl of Christ-Chex and think about what I've done.

What is this thing you call 'Golf'?

I've been out of my element before. Hell, I spend, at a minimum, 9 hours a day in an office smothered in slacks and polo shirts. But when I think about tomorrow I choke down bile and fear (oddly enough the combination tastes like spinach).

What is the irresistible appeal of hitting a ball that has never done you or your loved ones or very likely complete strangers any harm, playing hide and go seek with it, and just when it feels like it might have gotten away, that the abuse may finally stop, you find it, sometimes pet it and clout it again? Seems barbaric. The fact that this is sometimes accomplished with the aid of clever clown-like disguises makes it doubly so. (What is with those damn pants?!? And do you wear the hats to sidetrack?)

Have you ever really looked at a golf ball? Picked it up and held it and given it a name? They're adorable; all dimply and bright. It's like tossing a cross between Shirley Temple and a hairless gerbil into a mud puddle and stomping around a bit. You wouldn't walk up to a happy, sparkly Girl Scout and say "Excuse me, miss; but even though (or possibly because) you’re so cute and endearing and all things sweet, would you mind terribly if I punted you in the ass with this titanium stick and stole a box of Thin Mints?" (I hope not, at least) And the sound they make bouncing on a tiled floor? *sigh* Heaven!!! (The golf balls, not the children. That’s more of a <*Thump* “Bastard!"> Don’t ask.)

I’m all for violence in sports. Grown men taking slamming into each other for fun and profit up a notch with a few choice punches to the groin is o’tay by me, but don’t take what is veritably a stalking of innocence with butchery on your mind, dress it up in chinos and highballs and call it Sophistication.

As you saunter up to the tee to take that final executioner’s whack, thank your golf ball for its sacrifice to a wasted afternoon and the need for ludicrous jargon. When it winds up in the rough, don’t scold the poor thing for your incompetence; wish it well on its quest for freedom. When arguing the minute rules, regulations and legalese of water hazards, consider the horrid possibility that while you grumble and whine on dry land, little Benny or Sally or Hajib never learned to swim.

So, if you insist on perpetuating this malicious and, in the grand scheme of things, unpatriotic amusement, please, Please, PLEASE do this one thing for me (you club-toting miscreants): The next time you find yourself tooling about in checkered pants and matching pompom, an arsenal of wallop at your side (or the side of your underpaid, underappreciated college- or high school-aged pack-monkeys), take a moment to stop and smell your balls.

Too Lazy for Religion

Came to the realization... or did it really come to me? I was driving at the time so I may very well have slammed into the realization's ethereal ass smashing it into a kazillion teeny pieces and thereby inadvertently absorbing the light bulb of another. Is there a term for the rape of an epiphany? Do we already call this Congress? Wait, where was I? ...

Somehow this idea was formed in my tired, de-caffeinated brain that in the grand scheme of things I am much too lazy for the rigmarole of religion.

* I've no urge to remember holy days or Saints and their gruesome, psychotic-crowd-pleasing ends. Although their stories do make a good Christmas-Eve read - I was opposed to the happy, puffy, probably-diabeitc-by-now-fat-man-with-a-penchant-for-fur-and-leather, house-reeks-of-faux-fir-for-months foolishness of it all long before Christmas became known simply as "The Day Before..."

* I can't keep track of what I can eat and what causes me to break out in pustules of icky let alone what god considers a venial oopsie.

* The idea of possibly sharing a pew (that sounds nasty all on its own) with people I know for a fact have been beating their kids/wives/pets with the blunt end of a pogo stick makes me nauseous, too nauseous even to partake in a flaky little wafer and a sip of grape juice from what, after 10 or so mouths, can only be described as the Sacred Spittle Cup of Eew.

* I can't remember where I put my stick-man step-by-step of the almighty directional signal. The only thing I can recall is "Spectacles, testicles, wallet and watch" but seeing as I'm sans 2 of those things (I can't wear a watch without it fizzling out in an hour and after 27 years I'm pretty darn sure I don't have a set of those other things hidden on me anywhere) it's a might confusing.

* I can't remember names, faces or affiliations of relatives so an address book chock-full of polytheism would just confound me and anger them and then we'd run into each other waiting for a bus and I'd be all like "That guy looks familiar; who do I know that's blue?" and they'd be all like "She hasn't sent me flowers in a while; I wonder if she's been seeing that Jesus chap again" and we'd smile at each other in that way that says, "No, you say hi first" and there'd be awkwardness aplenty and right when I'd mustered the nerve to say, "Hey, there.... you... How've ya been?" his lotus flower would arrive and that'd be that.

* I have no talent for recalling the secret names of trees and rocks and furry little animals that would probably taste really good deep fried in the fatty secretions of more sacred 4-legged beings.

* Babies and children are for borrowing to get into LazyTown on Ice and movies that by going to alone you are automatically tagged as a pedophilic pervert and for blaming the purchase and/or discovery of anything rated PG on. (For example: CDs: Shrek soundtrack, anything by Christina Aguilera, DVDs: Ella Enchanted, The Aristocats; Books: If you Give a Pig a Pancake, If you Give a Moose a Muffin) Not for the propagation of the species or to fulfill some convoluted prophecy about spreading my seed. Besides the neighbors and their 12 kids and grandchildren have more than likely got my quota covered.

* There are more but to further expound on the title - Just Too Lazy.

Now don't get me wrong; I'm a big proponent of Faith (there's a distinction). I believe people are good and bad and what you do with your own particular cocktail is your own business. It's comforting to think that there's some overall concept of ingenuity pushing us along on our paths to whatever else there is, and if a church/temple/open field is your way of cuddling up to that unseen thingiemadoodle that ties each and every one of us together in a lumpy, misshapen, but thoroughly glorious pile of human then go for it.

Label and Prostrate and Flail About to feel that link.
Sing and Dance and Be Kind to strengthen it.

I believe really trying to be good cancels out any of the mean, petty, childish things each of us is capable of. And being Truthful, even if your truth can be dark and ugly and full of squirmy bits, speaks more of our potential than any number of shiny virtuous veneers.

Undead and... WTF!?!

I'd just finished a book fraught with human misery and after running across a friend's glowing recomendation for an audio-book he'd just finished listening to, I thought

'I can use a pick-me-up. Hey, this one sounds good. I shall trust this man's judgement and read this book about socialite-wannabe vampires and their love of shoes.'
(I sound much more mature in my own head)

Off I went to B&N with a perfect excuse to meander and waste some cash, but lo and behold I could not find it. I wandered all through Fiction but no luck. I finally broke down and asked a search-biscuit* where I might find the aforementioned books. Turns out I was in the entirely wrong section. So, my blog-perusing friend, you've done something that no one else has been able to do, not even the old biddy's I call relatives and friends - You made me want to buy a romance novel. And according to the spine this is no ordinary bodice ripper; it's a Paranormal Romance. So thank you for introducing me to the wonderful world of non-Fabio-smothered book-jackets and non-sensical romaticisms. Just make sure none of your home-security-loving homies see the CD case *evil grin*

* Heh heh! If Kevin sees this I'm gonna get in trouble for stealing his schtick

Five Years Ago Today...

Five years ago today I was sitting in front of the TV with my dad watching the 9/11 newscasts. All I can remember other than the sight of the towers coming down was the fact that for once he had nothing to say; for once in the 22 years I had known him, my dad was quiet. No complaining. No old-man commentary. He just sat and stared with this look of utter disbelief on his face. He'd seen war and hard work and a lifetime of trying to keep his family afloat with little regard to his own well-being, all the while peppering the days with his sometimes inappropriate, most times spot-on opinions of life and god and the neighbors. But this time, that particular morning, he was silence and reverance and, somewhere deep down, seething anger at the audacity of others. I'm 99.9% sure that that's not how he would have put it, tho. He'd probably have said something more along the lines of "Mother****ers" or some extrememly racist reference to an entire group of people's head-gear, but this was my link to the reality going on 2,000 miles away. This is what made images on a dusty TV screen real - the silence of an opinionated, out-spoken old man stunned into complacency by humanity's capacity for evil.