First I feel a little guilty about disparaging George Clooney’s movie last night. But not guilty enough that I’m going to keep quiet because I’ve been thinking more about it. The movie was called Ides of March, about a good politician with good ideas who would probably have done very good things for the country except that he made a mistake and in order to cover that mistake up, he had to compromise his values or else lose the election.
That part was pretty good, because you often wonder if politicians start out being slimeballs, but this movie shows you they can be regular people wanting to save the world but then they have this fatal flaw (generally located between their legs) that causes their downfall or at least becomes their main focus in life – not the ideals they went into politics for in the first place.
That part was eye opening and gave me a more sympathetic perspective on the life of politicians. But there was a part of the plot that just didn’t add up, and it distracted from everything. In fact, it made it the whole movie seem ludicrous.
But I can’t talk about it or it will spoil the movie if you decide to go see it. But I will say this. It was like someone said, “We need to show that this politician was a good guy but people forced him to compromise against his will because if he didn’t, his mistake would be exposed and he’d lose the election and then he wouldn’t be able to do all the good things he set out to do when he first got into politics. So what could that be? Think. Think really hard. What is something a politician could do that would put him in a compromised position. Come on, we’ve got to think of something. Mmmm, how about a good looking intern?”
That’s how it seemed like the plot got put together. And it just didn’t add up. You can have great actors and great filming and wonderful settings and love interests, but if the story seems contrived, the whole thing crumbles.
Enough of that movie – it was irritating but I have to get on with my life. I’m changing the subject.
Better still, I’m going to bed. Besides, I have the TV on in the background and I can’t concentrate. The remote is too far away, and I’m trying to focus but I’ve re-typed things because I kept getting distracted. And now there’s another Cialis commercial on and I can’t take it anymore. I’m sick of erectile dysfunction. I HAVE to get up and turn off that TV. When historians look back on these days and try to analyze why television went extinct, they will trace it to the outlandish proliferation of ED commercials. Someone needs to warn the Networks – a “Beware the Ides of March” soothsayer should tell them that they are running off people like me with those commercials. I can’t take it anymore. I’m getting up, turning the confounded thing off and going to bed. Goodnight.
Sunday, October 09, 2011
Saturday, October 08, 2011
Beware the Ides of March
We just got home from the movie, “The Ides of March.” For those of you who didn’t take Latin somewhere along the line, the “Ides” is the 15th of the month. When Julius Ceaser was out walking around Rome, a soothsayer (or sightseer) said to him, “Beware the Ides of March.”
And beware he should have, because on the Ides of March he got stabbed 23 times, led by an esteemed group of his colleagues and his good friend Brutus to whom he said these famous words, “E tu Brute?” which, roughly translated, means, “What the %$*@?”
George Clooney decided to make a film about this for modern times – about political betrayal and so forth – and by giving it this old Latin name he was evoking the similarities between ancient Rome and modern America.
Or maybe he was just trying to make a buck with a movie he hoped would draw in ticket buyers such as myself. You never know about the motivations of Hollywood. The movie seemed like an obvious remake of Bill Clinton’s dalliance with an intern and how he had such noble ideas but he let his little head do the thinking and ended up committing political suicide.
I, for one, didn’t need to watch a fake politician do all the sordid stuff these people do to get elected. I think everyone on earth, even bush people in Africa, knows that politics turns people into back scratching, blackmailing extortionists. I don’t know why I have to spend my Saturday night watching a predictable movie play out the same old story.
Every leading character in this movie either compromised their integrity, blackmailed someone, played dirty tricks, lied, betrayed their friends, or had sex with someone they shouldn’t have. It was business as usual for stereotypical politicians cynically depicted as visionaries without the backbone to do the right thing if it means they will lose the election.
Not much different that what old Julius Caesar was up to a couple thousand years ago. He should have stayed home, and I should have too.
And beware he should have, because on the Ides of March he got stabbed 23 times, led by an esteemed group of his colleagues and his good friend Brutus to whom he said these famous words, “E tu Brute?” which, roughly translated, means, “What the %$*@?”
George Clooney decided to make a film about this for modern times – about political betrayal and so forth – and by giving it this old Latin name he was evoking the similarities between ancient Rome and modern America.
Or maybe he was just trying to make a buck with a movie he hoped would draw in ticket buyers such as myself. You never know about the motivations of Hollywood. The movie seemed like an obvious remake of Bill Clinton’s dalliance with an intern and how he had such noble ideas but he let his little head do the thinking and ended up committing political suicide.
I, for one, didn’t need to watch a fake politician do all the sordid stuff these people do to get elected. I think everyone on earth, even bush people in Africa, knows that politics turns people into back scratching, blackmailing extortionists. I don’t know why I have to spend my Saturday night watching a predictable movie play out the same old story.
Every leading character in this movie either compromised their integrity, blackmailed someone, played dirty tricks, lied, betrayed their friends, or had sex with someone they shouldn’t have. It was business as usual for stereotypical politicians cynically depicted as visionaries without the backbone to do the right thing if it means they will lose the election.
Not much different that what old Julius Caesar was up to a couple thousand years ago. He should have stayed home, and I should have too.
Friday, October 07, 2011
A Drive to the Airport
I took my coworker and her husband to the airport this morning. I hadn’t met her husband yet, and I wanted to make a good impression. My little dog was coming with me in the car, and she often smells like a goat. The beast rolls in everything. She cannot go outside without flopping on her back and wiggling from side to side, all four legs in the air, grinding herself into some foul smelling dead something. I’ve seen her roll on a squished earthworm – any creature that has departed this world she will hunt down and have her back smeared into it in nanoseconds. She has to do it quick because I’ll see her through the window and yell at her to stop. She pretends she can’t hear me long enough to get coated in a stench, then jumps up and looks at me like, “You talkin’ to me?”
So this morning I gave her a couple of squirts of some cheap flowery smelling stuff my daughter had bought. My husband is allergic to scents so I don’t have my own perfumes.
When I squirted that dog with a fine mist of smell, she was so insulted. She took off running like I’d poured hot water on her and tried to rub it off on the walls. She nosed down into the carpet and walked along like she was trying to shovel something, pressing one side of her face and shoulder then the other into the rug in a pitiful attempt to try and scrape the scent off.
I’m not sure why a dog can’t stand to smell good. Not this one, anyway. If I let her outside after a bath, she streaks to the grass and starts rolling just to get the smell of dirt on her. She comes back in with half the back yard clinging to her long wet hair. You can’t comb it off, it’s woven in and half the time it’s sticky – why I don’t know. But as she walks through the house it drops all over the floor like autumn leaves in a windstorm. It looks like someone’s scattered brown and green confetti over every floor in the house.
There are laws of physics that state: a 10 pound, 12 inch high dog with long black hair can collect 30 times the squared surface area of its body in yard debris consisting of tiny sticks, brown grass from last week’s mowing, and those little maple helicopters. Double the formula if the place where the dog rolls is under a sappy fir tree like the ones covering our back yard.
So this morning this dog that normally smells like a goat because it’s not practical to give her a bath every five minutes - this dog smelled like a cheap tramp. When we got in the car, the whole place filled with the sweet smell of a bouquet of sickly sweet flowers. I discovered I didn’t have any gum and I hadn’t brushed my teeth for fear of being late. Then I put on some “unscented” lotion that added an acrid element to the mix.
When my passengers got in the car, the husband who I just met immediately rolled down his window, even though it was raining. The dog, loving the fresh air, jumped into the backseat to sit on his lap, coating his jeans in that perfumed goat smell that probably lingered throughout their whole 15 hour flight to Brazil.
I’m not so sure I made a good impression.
So this morning I gave her a couple of squirts of some cheap flowery smelling stuff my daughter had bought. My husband is allergic to scents so I don’t have my own perfumes.
When I squirted that dog with a fine mist of smell, she was so insulted. She took off running like I’d poured hot water on her and tried to rub it off on the walls. She nosed down into the carpet and walked along like she was trying to shovel something, pressing one side of her face and shoulder then the other into the rug in a pitiful attempt to try and scrape the scent off.
I’m not sure why a dog can’t stand to smell good. Not this one, anyway. If I let her outside after a bath, she streaks to the grass and starts rolling just to get the smell of dirt on her. She comes back in with half the back yard clinging to her long wet hair. You can’t comb it off, it’s woven in and half the time it’s sticky – why I don’t know. But as she walks through the house it drops all over the floor like autumn leaves in a windstorm. It looks like someone’s scattered brown and green confetti over every floor in the house.
There are laws of physics that state: a 10 pound, 12 inch high dog with long black hair can collect 30 times the squared surface area of its body in yard debris consisting of tiny sticks, brown grass from last week’s mowing, and those little maple helicopters. Double the formula if the place where the dog rolls is under a sappy fir tree like the ones covering our back yard.
So this morning this dog that normally smells like a goat because it’s not practical to give her a bath every five minutes - this dog smelled like a cheap tramp. When we got in the car, the whole place filled with the sweet smell of a bouquet of sickly sweet flowers. I discovered I didn’t have any gum and I hadn’t brushed my teeth for fear of being late. Then I put on some “unscented” lotion that added an acrid element to the mix.
When my passengers got in the car, the husband who I just met immediately rolled down his window, even though it was raining. The dog, loving the fresh air, jumped into the backseat to sit on his lap, coating his jeans in that perfumed goat smell that probably lingered throughout their whole 15 hour flight to Brazil.
I’m not so sure I made a good impression.
Thursday, October 06, 2011
The Middleman Mentality in America Part 2
What’s this got to do with middlemen? Back in the day, you could go to a “doctor” and he’d do what he could for you and send you home. Now there is no such thing as just a plain doctor. You go to your (insert whatever you call the person you go to for stuff – like your gynecologist or internist or proctologist), and then s/he refers you to someone else – usually a drug company to get some antibiotic or cough syrup, or to another doctor, called a specialist because he doesn’t know anything about the human body except that one special part – be it the brain or kidneys or intestines. Don’t even ask him about that wart on your big toe – he doesn’t know what to do about it except to refer you to a toe specialist.
What’s the connection? The person you call “doctor” is a middleman for the drug companies and specialists, and the drug companies are the middleman between you and staying healthy in the first place.
Where did all these middle people come from? I just heard on the TV that in the last hundred or so years, the population of the world went from 1 billion to almost 7 billion. All those people have to have jobs – and since all the regular jobs were filled, then we in America created all these middlemen jobs to keep these people busy and off the streets.
A hundred years ago, your town had one doctor and all the drugs he had were in a little black back that opened at the top. I always liked those bags. No zippers. I don’t know how they kept them closed, but in the movies the doc just pulled the two handles apart and took out a little clear bottle with a cork in it, and that cured anything from hoof and mouth disease to tapeworm.
Today, these middlemen are everywhere. You can’t call anyone directly if they have a business, you have to go through a receptionist. You can’t buy a new car from a salesperson, you have to go through the guy who makes you feel like your breaking his company but he’s going to – against his better judgment – give you a fantastic deal and an outrageous trade-in allowance on your beater if you’ll sign right now. You have to get a wedding planner to coordinate your wedding, and a realtor to help you buy a house. These positions give all those extra people something to do.
I’m not saying I’m against drug companies, or doctors, or anything else in particular. But it rankles when I think of drug companies inventing these cures for things that could easily be fixed with a little lifestyle change. The commercials should be like, “If you are losing bone density, get up right now, RIGHT NOW I SAID, and get some exercise, you big fat lard. You do NOT need this pill I’m pushing. And you do not need to hound your doctor into prescribing it to you.”
But that would be stupid for the drug companies to do. So it appears middlemen are here to stay, for better or for worse. Otherwise the unemployment rate would soar and Obama (yo mama) would never get that jobs bill passed.
What’s the connection? The person you call “doctor” is a middleman for the drug companies and specialists, and the drug companies are the middleman between you and staying healthy in the first place.
Where did all these middle people come from? I just heard on the TV that in the last hundred or so years, the population of the world went from 1 billion to almost 7 billion. All those people have to have jobs – and since all the regular jobs were filled, then we in America created all these middlemen jobs to keep these people busy and off the streets.
A hundred years ago, your town had one doctor and all the drugs he had were in a little black back that opened at the top. I always liked those bags. No zippers. I don’t know how they kept them closed, but in the movies the doc just pulled the two handles apart and took out a little clear bottle with a cork in it, and that cured anything from hoof and mouth disease to tapeworm.
Today, these middlemen are everywhere. You can’t call anyone directly if they have a business, you have to go through a receptionist. You can’t buy a new car from a salesperson, you have to go through the guy who makes you feel like your breaking his company but he’s going to – against his better judgment – give you a fantastic deal and an outrageous trade-in allowance on your beater if you’ll sign right now. You have to get a wedding planner to coordinate your wedding, and a realtor to help you buy a house. These positions give all those extra people something to do.
I’m not saying I’m against drug companies, or doctors, or anything else in particular. But it rankles when I think of drug companies inventing these cures for things that could easily be fixed with a little lifestyle change. The commercials should be like, “If you are losing bone density, get up right now, RIGHT NOW I SAID, and get some exercise, you big fat lard. You do NOT need this pill I’m pushing. And you do not need to hound your doctor into prescribing it to you.”
But that would be stupid for the drug companies to do. So it appears middlemen are here to stay, for better or for worse. Otherwise the unemployment rate would soar and Obama (yo mama) would never get that jobs bill passed.
Wednesday, October 05, 2011
The Middleman Mentality in America
I just saw a commercial on TV that showed a close-up of a big leg, broken and mending in a lumpy grey cast that looked like it had been globbed on by a kindergartner.
I could comment on the shoddy workmanship of orthopedic practioners, but let’s move forward to the purpose of this article – the reason for that commercial.
It was an alert to people with osteoporosis that they could sue their doctors if they had broken various bones since starting drugs prescribed by their doctors to prevent osteoporosis.
I promise not to use any more big words after this next couple of osteoporosises, because they are too hard to type. If you don’t know what osteoporosis is, come out of your wilderness cave and turn on the TV. There you will learn, among other things, that it is impossible to get or maintain an erection in America. You will also find out that several drugs - developed by good, honest drug companies - have been prescribed to help prevent osteoporosis – drugs whose very purpose was to make things all better in the “O-word” area of people’s lives – and now we come to find out that these selfsame drugs had in fact been causing the very symptom – THE VERY SYMPTOM – that they have been relentlously tauting as a cure on TV, in magazines, and everywhere else visible to the human eye – yes, these drugs that were meant to prevent broken bones caused by the O-word actually CAUSE broken bones.
You might be wondering, what kind of a person can produce the run-on sentence in the last paragraph and get away with it. But we’re not here to talk about grammer for crying out loud (or spelling either, for that matter), we’re here to talk about something I’m sure I’ll remember if I reread what I just wrote.
Yes, we’re here to talk about the middleman mentality in America. What do commercials about drug companies being sued have to do with that? Something, you can bet your bottom dollar on that.
It’s just this. The big-O can be helped by weight-bearing exercise and a healthy diet rich in calcium and Vitamin D. Healthy diet refers to foods in the non-potato chip/non-pork-rind family. Weight-bearing means getting off the couch and bearing your weight around the block a few times, as well as using your arms to lift some weight – like your chocolate-smeared, bawling toddler with the diaper sagging to his ankles, and so forth. Many, many Americans refuse to exercise, preferring to sit in the comfort of their home and watch people on TV very much like themselves who waddle around and scream obscenities at their friends and loved ones all day long.
This is where the drug companies come in – the middlemen in the health care industry. They create drugs for all the billions of Americans in the aforementioned paragraph so they won’t HAVE to exercise or give up the foods they love, such as beer and cigarettes. Instead they can take a pill.
In the case of the O-word, the pill is supposed to help prevent broken bones. So if you’ve got a bone that broke because you took a drug to keep that was supposed to keep it from breaking – a perfectly good bone that might not have broken, left to its own devices, for years and years – then you have the right to sue the #*)@! out of the drug company, according to these commercials.
To be continued….if I don’t forget
I could comment on the shoddy workmanship of orthopedic practioners, but let’s move forward to the purpose of this article – the reason for that commercial.
It was an alert to people with osteoporosis that they could sue their doctors if they had broken various bones since starting drugs prescribed by their doctors to prevent osteoporosis.
I promise not to use any more big words after this next couple of osteoporosises, because they are too hard to type. If you don’t know what osteoporosis is, come out of your wilderness cave and turn on the TV. There you will learn, among other things, that it is impossible to get or maintain an erection in America. You will also find out that several drugs - developed by good, honest drug companies - have been prescribed to help prevent osteoporosis – drugs whose very purpose was to make things all better in the “O-word” area of people’s lives – and now we come to find out that these selfsame drugs had in fact been causing the very symptom – THE VERY SYMPTOM – that they have been relentlously tauting as a cure on TV, in magazines, and everywhere else visible to the human eye – yes, these drugs that were meant to prevent broken bones caused by the O-word actually CAUSE broken bones.
You might be wondering, what kind of a person can produce the run-on sentence in the last paragraph and get away with it. But we’re not here to talk about grammer for crying out loud (or spelling either, for that matter), we’re here to talk about something I’m sure I’ll remember if I reread what I just wrote.
Yes, we’re here to talk about the middleman mentality in America. What do commercials about drug companies being sued have to do with that? Something, you can bet your bottom dollar on that.
It’s just this. The big-O can be helped by weight-bearing exercise and a healthy diet rich in calcium and Vitamin D. Healthy diet refers to foods in the non-potato chip/non-pork-rind family. Weight-bearing means getting off the couch and bearing your weight around the block a few times, as well as using your arms to lift some weight – like your chocolate-smeared, bawling toddler with the diaper sagging to his ankles, and so forth. Many, many Americans refuse to exercise, preferring to sit in the comfort of their home and watch people on TV very much like themselves who waddle around and scream obscenities at their friends and loved ones all day long.
This is where the drug companies come in – the middlemen in the health care industry. They create drugs for all the billions of Americans in the aforementioned paragraph so they won’t HAVE to exercise or give up the foods they love, such as beer and cigarettes. Instead they can take a pill.
In the case of the O-word, the pill is supposed to help prevent broken bones. So if you’ve got a bone that broke because you took a drug to keep that was supposed to keep it from breaking – a perfectly good bone that might not have broken, left to its own devices, for years and years – then you have the right to sue the #*)@! out of the drug company, according to these commercials.
To be continued….if I don’t forget
Tuesday, September 20, 2011
Lamenting the Foulness of Life
My dog’s stomach is growling. She had a bunch o’ rib bones and now I can expect puddles of barbecued barf in my bed tonight. Disgusting, huh?
This dog weighs ten pounds and is by my side night and day. She’s laying snugged up next to me on the couch while I type, right in the path of the 140º heat blowing out of my laptop. It’s like someone strapped a heating pad to my leg.
I generally like heat – love those seat warmers. My cousin always wants to drive my car when we go somewhere and all winter I’ve got my seat warmer on. He’ll be sitting there in the driver’s seat, talking about his latest BM.
“Boys, you should have seen what came out of me this morning.” He says boys no matter what the gender of his audience is. “Black as coal and all of 12 inches, coiled up like a cobra, part of it floating like it was ready to strike.”
“I do NOT need to hear about this,” I say.
“It was remarkable,” he’ll say. “Never seen anything like it. I got a picture of it here on my phone – take a look, you won’t believe it. Here, see? Why is it so friggin’ hot? My nuts are roastin’!”
He says it every time we’re in the car – like the seat has launched some sneak attack against his scrotum.
Worse than his stories are when my dog barfs in the car while she’s sitting on my lap. I hear this little burbing noise and a nano-second later she heaves and there’s a puddle the size of a spilled glass of milk on my thigh – slimy and the color of whatever nauseating thing she ate out in our woods. Sometimes it grass in a clear slime like some kind of Tai pad lemongrass soup. Others it’s brown and lumpy.
The worse part is that you can’t do anything about it. I’ll be on the freeway going 65 mph when she Ralphs on me. First the sound, and I try to get her off my lap but I’m never fast enough. Just about the time I get my hands on her waist and snatch her up, I feel the warmth on my thigh, then the wetness. Anyone who’s had a baby knows what that feeling is like. That baby’s happy and coochie cooing one minute, and the next minute you’ve got this foul ooze traveling south down your silk blouse.
At least the dog barf doesn’t smell so bad. You talk about smells, I went into the ladies bathroom at the permit office the other day. Oh my gosh! Women’s bathrooms after they’ve had their morning coffee are worse than paper factories. Woo-whee! Brings tears to the eyes.
I don’t know what’s made me write about these things. Oh yeah, it was that dog’s growling belly. It’s my lament of the unwelcome bodily functions I encounter daily.
This dog weighs ten pounds and is by my side night and day. She’s laying snugged up next to me on the couch while I type, right in the path of the 140º heat blowing out of my laptop. It’s like someone strapped a heating pad to my leg.
I generally like heat – love those seat warmers. My cousin always wants to drive my car when we go somewhere and all winter I’ve got my seat warmer on. He’ll be sitting there in the driver’s seat, talking about his latest BM.
“Boys, you should have seen what came out of me this morning.” He says boys no matter what the gender of his audience is. “Black as coal and all of 12 inches, coiled up like a cobra, part of it floating like it was ready to strike.”
“I do NOT need to hear about this,” I say.
“It was remarkable,” he’ll say. “Never seen anything like it. I got a picture of it here on my phone – take a look, you won’t believe it. Here, see? Why is it so friggin’ hot? My nuts are roastin’!”
He says it every time we’re in the car – like the seat has launched some sneak attack against his scrotum.
Worse than his stories are when my dog barfs in the car while she’s sitting on my lap. I hear this little burbing noise and a nano-second later she heaves and there’s a puddle the size of a spilled glass of milk on my thigh – slimy and the color of whatever nauseating thing she ate out in our woods. Sometimes it grass in a clear slime like some kind of Tai pad lemongrass soup. Others it’s brown and lumpy.
The worse part is that you can’t do anything about it. I’ll be on the freeway going 65 mph when she Ralphs on me. First the sound, and I try to get her off my lap but I’m never fast enough. Just about the time I get my hands on her waist and snatch her up, I feel the warmth on my thigh, then the wetness. Anyone who’s had a baby knows what that feeling is like. That baby’s happy and coochie cooing one minute, and the next minute you’ve got this foul ooze traveling south down your silk blouse.
At least the dog barf doesn’t smell so bad. You talk about smells, I went into the ladies bathroom at the permit office the other day. Oh my gosh! Women’s bathrooms after they’ve had their morning coffee are worse than paper factories. Woo-whee! Brings tears to the eyes.
I don’t know what’s made me write about these things. Oh yeah, it was that dog’s growling belly. It’s my lament of the unwelcome bodily functions I encounter daily.
Monday, September 12, 2011
What's with Democrats?
What’s Up with Democrats?
In my last blog I trashed Republicans. That was pretty easy to do because they have gotten so ridiculous. Their only reason for being in office, apparently, is to get Obama out of office - even if it means destroying these entire United States.
But for this to be a bi-partisan blog so as not to alienate half the country, I am obliged to also take a poke at Democrats. That’s pretty easy too.
Democrats believe that everyone deserves help – even the lowlifes who get pregnant to increase their welfare stipend. Actually, I’m not sure if that goes on anymore – surely even the most fertile dimwit knows that a child costs more in the long run than you’ll ever get from the government. But just in case there are people still doing this for a living, I believe the Democrats should at least ask them to give something in return for the handout.
Once you start giving people money for nothing, how many are going to want to go back to scrubbing toilets or plucking chickens? I say give these able-bodied people money, but only in exchange for useful work. Make the welfare moms work in day cares so they can get a belly full of children. Make them work in grocery stores so they can see how obnoxious the people getting food stamps can be. Let them deal with those very heavy, loud mouthed mothers in checkout lines with their carts are full of cigarettes and fried potato products, arrogant and entitled, chips on their shoulders – trying to sneak stuff by and arguing indignantly when they get caught.
These are the people the Democrats insist that American taxpayers help. We taxpayers don’t mind helping those people who are temporarily down and out, we are sympathetic to the man trying to support his family after he’s had a job yanked out from under him, but we’re sick of those who milk us because they’re lazy and no account. They’re almost as bad as rich Republicans who milk us because they’ve figured out how to avoid paying even one penny in taxes.
Democrats want better health care for everyone. You want healthy people, make them get off their lard bottoms and walk somewhere else besides to the refrigerator. Make food stamp people weigh in, or prove they’re buying vegetables for their children instead of Twinkies. Give them books on healthy living and test them once a week before they get our tax dollars. Force them to be healthy in exchange for their money so they won’t need doctors for diabetes for them and their innocent offspring.
Democrats want to help anyone without accountability so that people get lazy – and Republicans want to help themselves get richer so that people get bitter. Doesn’t anyone see this except me?
In my last blog I trashed Republicans. That was pretty easy to do because they have gotten so ridiculous. Their only reason for being in office, apparently, is to get Obama out of office - even if it means destroying these entire United States.
But for this to be a bi-partisan blog so as not to alienate half the country, I am obliged to also take a poke at Democrats. That’s pretty easy too.
Democrats believe that everyone deserves help – even the lowlifes who get pregnant to increase their welfare stipend. Actually, I’m not sure if that goes on anymore – surely even the most fertile dimwit knows that a child costs more in the long run than you’ll ever get from the government. But just in case there are people still doing this for a living, I believe the Democrats should at least ask them to give something in return for the handout.
Once you start giving people money for nothing, how many are going to want to go back to scrubbing toilets or plucking chickens? I say give these able-bodied people money, but only in exchange for useful work. Make the welfare moms work in day cares so they can get a belly full of children. Make them work in grocery stores so they can see how obnoxious the people getting food stamps can be. Let them deal with those very heavy, loud mouthed mothers in checkout lines with their carts are full of cigarettes and fried potato products, arrogant and entitled, chips on their shoulders – trying to sneak stuff by and arguing indignantly when they get caught.
These are the people the Democrats insist that American taxpayers help. We taxpayers don’t mind helping those people who are temporarily down and out, we are sympathetic to the man trying to support his family after he’s had a job yanked out from under him, but we’re sick of those who milk us because they’re lazy and no account. They’re almost as bad as rich Republicans who milk us because they’ve figured out how to avoid paying even one penny in taxes.
Democrats want better health care for everyone. You want healthy people, make them get off their lard bottoms and walk somewhere else besides to the refrigerator. Make food stamp people weigh in, or prove they’re buying vegetables for their children instead of Twinkies. Give them books on healthy living and test them once a week before they get our tax dollars. Force them to be healthy in exchange for their money so they won’t need doctors for diabetes for them and their innocent offspring.
Democrats want to help anyone without accountability so that people get lazy – and Republicans want to help themselves get richer so that people get bitter. Doesn’t anyone see this except me?
Thursday, September 08, 2011
What's with Republicans?
What’s with Republicans?
I know I should not talk about politics. It’s a total waste of time - you can’t convert anyone – you’re either preaching to the choir or talking to a brick wall.
Nonetheless, I have to ask, what is freaking up with Republicans? The ones I know are either wealthy and don’t want the government to take any of their money, or they’re dirt poor and fiercely prejudiced – they resent everyone who isn’t like them.
It’s funny to listen to the fat cat Republicans fretting about taxes. The ones I know have two houses, drive Lexus’s, send their kids to private schools, take several vacations a year to Hawaii and Mexico, and so forth.
Yet they get very angry when anyone talks about raising taxes. They don’t want riff-raff sucking away all their hard earned money. I can almost understand these guys – at least they’re sensible. They’re trying to protect what they’ve earned.
It’s the poor Republicans I don’t get. They resent everyone and feel they’re better than the rest of the poor because they have more than 50 percent of their teeth. They are perfectly contented to send their kids to crumbling schools and packed classrooms because they think education is a waste of time – it never got them anywhere. They’re not worried about the condition of roads because their beaters bounce about the same whether the road’s paved or potholed.
As long as they’ve got beer after a sweaty day at work, and something fresh to complain about, they’re pretty satisfied. They don’t want to help anyone else because no one else deserves it, dammit.
If the rich Republicans paid fair taxes, then the poor Republicans could have better schools, roads, parks, libraries, police protection, early education for their children, health care, etc. But the rich ones want to stay rich – they have enough money to buy all these things - and the poor ones think these things are a waste. The poor wear their lack of ambition like a badge of honor.
These two groups have nothing in common, but they rely on each other to fight the battle against those who want a to raise the standards for everyone. When Republicans control things, the rich get richer, and the poor get poorer. I don’t get why poor Republicans are so hell-bent on being worse off. And rich Republicans have no remorse about hoarding their wealth and living the good life when they could share some of their blessings and make life better for everyone.
This is what dictators and wicked kings do. But in a country where people are free to choose, we ought to have better sense. However, the poor will spite their own selves rather than help those they hate, and the rich, knowing this, will egg the poor on and rile them up about illegal aliens or welfare or whatever it is they despise at this point in history. Then the rich laugh all the way to the bank. This, my friends, is why I don’t get Republicans.
I know I should not talk about politics. It’s a total waste of time - you can’t convert anyone – you’re either preaching to the choir or talking to a brick wall.
Nonetheless, I have to ask, what is freaking up with Republicans? The ones I know are either wealthy and don’t want the government to take any of their money, or they’re dirt poor and fiercely prejudiced – they resent everyone who isn’t like them.
It’s funny to listen to the fat cat Republicans fretting about taxes. The ones I know have two houses, drive Lexus’s, send their kids to private schools, take several vacations a year to Hawaii and Mexico, and so forth.
Yet they get very angry when anyone talks about raising taxes. They don’t want riff-raff sucking away all their hard earned money. I can almost understand these guys – at least they’re sensible. They’re trying to protect what they’ve earned.
It’s the poor Republicans I don’t get. They resent everyone and feel they’re better than the rest of the poor because they have more than 50 percent of their teeth. They are perfectly contented to send their kids to crumbling schools and packed classrooms because they think education is a waste of time – it never got them anywhere. They’re not worried about the condition of roads because their beaters bounce about the same whether the road’s paved or potholed.
As long as they’ve got beer after a sweaty day at work, and something fresh to complain about, they’re pretty satisfied. They don’t want to help anyone else because no one else deserves it, dammit.
If the rich Republicans paid fair taxes, then the poor Republicans could have better schools, roads, parks, libraries, police protection, early education for their children, health care, etc. But the rich ones want to stay rich – they have enough money to buy all these things - and the poor ones think these things are a waste. The poor wear their lack of ambition like a badge of honor.
These two groups have nothing in common, but they rely on each other to fight the battle against those who want a to raise the standards for everyone. When Republicans control things, the rich get richer, and the poor get poorer. I don’t get why poor Republicans are so hell-bent on being worse off. And rich Republicans have no remorse about hoarding their wealth and living the good life when they could share some of their blessings and make life better for everyone.
This is what dictators and wicked kings do. But in a country where people are free to choose, we ought to have better sense. However, the poor will spite their own selves rather than help those they hate, and the rich, knowing this, will egg the poor on and rile them up about illegal aliens or welfare or whatever it is they despise at this point in history. Then the rich laugh all the way to the bank. This, my friends, is why I don’t get Republicans.
Happy as a Clam
I am a crazy person. I’m crazy for doing what I did, and even crazier for telling you about it. But I said I’d write a blog tonight after a long, long absence and I’ve procrastinated until it’s late and I’m tired and woe is me. This story I can do quick.
My husband bought a bunch of clams last Saturday for a seafood feed at our friends’ vacation house. He cooked most of them, but decided to cull out some to take home the next day.
When we got back, he found a broken clam and decided all the clams could be bad, so he chucked them in the garbage.
I was livid. He should have just cooked them all at our friends’. He should not have bought them in the first place because there was way too much food already and we couldn’t’ plow through it all (though I tried). He should have been more careful bringing them home. These are all things I made sure he clearly understood after he tossed those clams.
But those weren’t the reasons I was so irritated. I was P.O.’d because I knew good and well that I’d think about those clams in the garbage can, dying a slow miserable death as the heat got to them, wondering what they were thinking in their little clam brains as the life oozed out of them like the yellow goo leaching out of a festering boil, and knowing that they were calling, in their tiny clam voices, “Somebody please help us.”
I knew I’d lose sleep, and I knew I’d remember it with remorse all the days of my life and into the very grave. This is what made me mad as a hornet, fit to be tied, and angry as a skunk tangled in briars.
I went out to that filthy, slimy garbage can and fished out those clams, one by one, amid the coffee grounds, corn husks, and used feminine hygiene products, and put them into a bowl in the refrigerator because, according to Google, that’s how you keep clams alive. I would drive them to the beach two hours away, by golly, and put them back in the bay.
This morning I talked my daughter into going with me and we headed to Netarts. We waded into the ice-cold Oregon bay, full of squishy mud, seaweed, and pointy rocks, and I gave those poor clams back to the clear brown sea. I don’t know how many survived the ordeal in the cooler and refrigerator, and I don’t know what will happen to them or whether they will be able to make a home where I left them, or if the seagulls and crabs will feast on them when the tide goes out, but I do know I will sleep tonight because they aren’t in my garbage can screaming in voices that I would have heard all night long in my dreams.
And if that trip to the beach makes me a crazy woman, I’d rather be crazy than wrestling nightmares for the next six hours.
BTW, it’s good to be back to my blog. You could say I’m, well, uh, happy as a clam. Snicker, snicker.
My husband bought a bunch of clams last Saturday for a seafood feed at our friends’ vacation house. He cooked most of them, but decided to cull out some to take home the next day.
When we got back, he found a broken clam and decided all the clams could be bad, so he chucked them in the garbage.
I was livid. He should have just cooked them all at our friends’. He should not have bought them in the first place because there was way too much food already and we couldn’t’ plow through it all (though I tried). He should have been more careful bringing them home. These are all things I made sure he clearly understood after he tossed those clams.
But those weren’t the reasons I was so irritated. I was P.O.’d because I knew good and well that I’d think about those clams in the garbage can, dying a slow miserable death as the heat got to them, wondering what they were thinking in their little clam brains as the life oozed out of them like the yellow goo leaching out of a festering boil, and knowing that they were calling, in their tiny clam voices, “Somebody please help us.”
I knew I’d lose sleep, and I knew I’d remember it with remorse all the days of my life and into the very grave. This is what made me mad as a hornet, fit to be tied, and angry as a skunk tangled in briars.
I went out to that filthy, slimy garbage can and fished out those clams, one by one, amid the coffee grounds, corn husks, and used feminine hygiene products, and put them into a bowl in the refrigerator because, according to Google, that’s how you keep clams alive. I would drive them to the beach two hours away, by golly, and put them back in the bay.
This morning I talked my daughter into going with me and we headed to Netarts. We waded into the ice-cold Oregon bay, full of squishy mud, seaweed, and pointy rocks, and I gave those poor clams back to the clear brown sea. I don’t know how many survived the ordeal in the cooler and refrigerator, and I don’t know what will happen to them or whether they will be able to make a home where I left them, or if the seagulls and crabs will feast on them when the tide goes out, but I do know I will sleep tonight because they aren’t in my garbage can screaming in voices that I would have heard all night long in my dreams.
And if that trip to the beach makes me a crazy woman, I’d rather be crazy than wrestling nightmares for the next six hours.
BTW, it’s good to be back to my blog. You could say I’m, well, uh, happy as a clam. Snicker, snicker.
Monday, November 29, 2010
Stuff I'm Thankful For
At Thanksgiving dinner we were requested by our hostess to say something we were thankful about. I said I was thankful I got to go skiing earlier in the day, and to my credit I did NOT say I was thankful that I got to do something fun with my family rather than spending days cleaning, shopping, cooking and then cleaning just as much again after everyone went home.
My gynecologist turned me on to skiing on Thanksgiving. He was looking at me through the stirrups, making idol chitchat about how he and his sons have been going to the mountain for years because there are no crowds and no lift lines. When they go home, his wife has a big turkey feast waiting for them.
I wonder what it would be like to be the wife of a gynecologist? Just think about it.
Since he told me that about skiing, I’ve made it my life’s goal to get invited out for Thanksgiving rather than spending it in the kitchen slaving. I’ve been able to do it for the last two years, and with any luck, I can keep this tradition going.
But scamming Thanksgiving dinner is not the subject of today’s blog. Nope, getting out of cooking and cleaning is wonderful, but I want to devote this space to some of the things I’m thankful for. Let me share my little list.
I’m thankful that my kids no longer rely on me to drive them around. Oh Lord am I thankful for that.
I’m thankful that, in spite of how much they appear to bumble, the politicians I voted for are trying hard to make life better for me personally and for others who don’t have my gifts and advantages.
Speaking of those others, I’m thankful I live in a country that wants to take care of our poor even when some of them seem to be taking advantage. I would hate to live in a third world country where the poor line the streets like wax paper and no one pays any attention to them. If I didn’t have to pay taxes, that would be great, but as long as there are poor and disadvantaged, I love knowing our poor aren’t nearly as poor as the poor in the rest of the world.
When you get right down to it, I’m actually thankful I pay taxes, because I like public schools and roads, nice public buildings and museums, subsidized clinics where suffering people can find some relief, public housing for people who couldn’t afford to live anywhere else. I hate that there are lazy people who take advantage of my taxes (shame on you), but I’m very happy that children born to poor families get the opportunity to be educated in spite of their circumstances.
I’m thankful for my dog who is excited when I walk in the door even if I’ve just gone out to the mailbox.
I’m thankful for TV. Yes there are so many awful programs (Jerry Springer to name a few), but I like finding free movies to watch so I can float away from reality like a soapy bubble blown out of a plastic wand. I’m especially thankful for The Big Bang Theory.
I’m thankful for laptops and comforters and chocolate chips and sunny days.
Now I’m going to give YOU something to be thankful about. I’m going to end this sentimental romp down Pollyanna lane and jump into something I’m very, very thankful for. A warm bed piled high with heirloom quilts my grandma patched together. Now that right there is definitely something to be thankful for.
My gynecologist turned me on to skiing on Thanksgiving. He was looking at me through the stirrups, making idol chitchat about how he and his sons have been going to the mountain for years because there are no crowds and no lift lines. When they go home, his wife has a big turkey feast waiting for them.
I wonder what it would be like to be the wife of a gynecologist? Just think about it.
Since he told me that about skiing, I’ve made it my life’s goal to get invited out for Thanksgiving rather than spending it in the kitchen slaving. I’ve been able to do it for the last two years, and with any luck, I can keep this tradition going.
But scamming Thanksgiving dinner is not the subject of today’s blog. Nope, getting out of cooking and cleaning is wonderful, but I want to devote this space to some of the things I’m thankful for. Let me share my little list.
I’m thankful that my kids no longer rely on me to drive them around. Oh Lord am I thankful for that.
I’m thankful that, in spite of how much they appear to bumble, the politicians I voted for are trying hard to make life better for me personally and for others who don’t have my gifts and advantages.
Speaking of those others, I’m thankful I live in a country that wants to take care of our poor even when some of them seem to be taking advantage. I would hate to live in a third world country where the poor line the streets like wax paper and no one pays any attention to them. If I didn’t have to pay taxes, that would be great, but as long as there are poor and disadvantaged, I love knowing our poor aren’t nearly as poor as the poor in the rest of the world.
When you get right down to it, I’m actually thankful I pay taxes, because I like public schools and roads, nice public buildings and museums, subsidized clinics where suffering people can find some relief, public housing for people who couldn’t afford to live anywhere else. I hate that there are lazy people who take advantage of my taxes (shame on you), but I’m very happy that children born to poor families get the opportunity to be educated in spite of their circumstances.
I’m thankful for my dog who is excited when I walk in the door even if I’ve just gone out to the mailbox.
I’m thankful for TV. Yes there are so many awful programs (Jerry Springer to name a few), but I like finding free movies to watch so I can float away from reality like a soapy bubble blown out of a plastic wand. I’m especially thankful for The Big Bang Theory.
I’m thankful for laptops and comforters and chocolate chips and sunny days.
Now I’m going to give YOU something to be thankful about. I’m going to end this sentimental romp down Pollyanna lane and jump into something I’m very, very thankful for. A warm bed piled high with heirloom quilts my grandma patched together. Now that right there is definitely something to be thankful for.
Wednesday, November 17, 2010
Floating in an Italian Alley
My daughter and I went to Europe a couple of years ago. We had a fantastic time, mostly because my daughter’s red hair attracted attention and won us special favors and kindnesses. Even in France, where there is a reputation of impatience with Americans, we were treated well. My daughter also knew enough French to talk to the waiters. They were aken by her. One waiter flirted openly and gave her his phone number – right in front of me. He asked if he could come to America to see her.
The most memorable experience, however, was in Italy. Italian men practically shoved themselves at her. Unlike in France where people on the streets were in a hurry and did not seem inclined to notice us, the Italian men leisurely gawked at us when we walked by. Sometimes we’d be in those cobbled alleyways with only a few people around, and the waiters would be standing outside smoking. All Italian waiters smoke. They’d see us coming from far away and stared the whole time we walked toward them, looking us up and down openly and unabashedly as we passed.
I’d like to take a second to look up the word “unabashedly” because by anyone’s standards that’s a doozie. Doozie is another word I’d like to look up. It was popular back in the day, but I don’t hear people using it much anymore. Either of these words would be well worth a side trip to Funk and Wagnall, but I’d like to get on with my story so that will have to wait.
When the men eyeballed us (and by “us” I mean my daughter), I’d say under my breath, “Don’t look at them. I don’t want them following us around like stray dogs.”
They were a fine looking bunch of specimens and that is the truth. Italian men are a delicious feast for the eyes. Slurp. But I’d read in the touristy books that it was not a good idea to encourage them. The books warned of men grab women’s bottoms in public. I don’t think I would have been too offended if I was the destination of some wandering Italian hand, but I sure didn’t want one of these guys groping my baby girl.
So we both kept our eyes facing forward and picked up our pace when we’d see the smoking Italians leaning against the outside café walls, drinking us in like we were Chianti.
Once, however, we were walking down an alley in the sultry, dusky evening, and a young Italian man was walking toward us. He had on a long-sleeve white shirt with the cuffs rolled up, and long, dark pants that swished as he walked. He was tall and exceedingly good-looking, and he had not taken his eyes off of us the entire time he swaggered toward us. As usual I whispered, “Just stare straight ahead.”
He smiled brightly at us when he was about twenty feet away and my daughter must have smiled back because he stopped, and in that exaggerated Italian way you see Italian men act in movies, he grabbed his heart with both hands and said, i“Ahhhh, she smile at me! She breakin’ my heart!”
We both giggled and said, “Buon giorno.” He stood still and watched us walk by, still clutching his heart, grinning with luminescent white teeth. He made us feel like we were beautiful and exotic and like we were eye candy right back at him.
One day when I’m in a nursing home drooling cream of wheat, I hope I still remember this man and his flamboyant compliment to two worn out Americans tromping down the street on exhausted legs after another hot, humid day of roaming around Rome trying to snatch every sight in three fast days, and how he made us feel like we were walking on air.
The most memorable experience, however, was in Italy. Italian men practically shoved themselves at her. Unlike in France where people on the streets were in a hurry and did not seem inclined to notice us, the Italian men leisurely gawked at us when we walked by. Sometimes we’d be in those cobbled alleyways with only a few people around, and the waiters would be standing outside smoking. All Italian waiters smoke. They’d see us coming from far away and stared the whole time we walked toward them, looking us up and down openly and unabashedly as we passed.
I’d like to take a second to look up the word “unabashedly” because by anyone’s standards that’s a doozie. Doozie is another word I’d like to look up. It was popular back in the day, but I don’t hear people using it much anymore. Either of these words would be well worth a side trip to Funk and Wagnall, but I’d like to get on with my story so that will have to wait.
When the men eyeballed us (and by “us” I mean my daughter), I’d say under my breath, “Don’t look at them. I don’t want them following us around like stray dogs.”
They were a fine looking bunch of specimens and that is the truth. Italian men are a delicious feast for the eyes. Slurp. But I’d read in the touristy books that it was not a good idea to encourage them. The books warned of men grab women’s bottoms in public. I don’t think I would have been too offended if I was the destination of some wandering Italian hand, but I sure didn’t want one of these guys groping my baby girl.
So we both kept our eyes facing forward and picked up our pace when we’d see the smoking Italians leaning against the outside café walls, drinking us in like we were Chianti.
Once, however, we were walking down an alley in the sultry, dusky evening, and a young Italian man was walking toward us. He had on a long-sleeve white shirt with the cuffs rolled up, and long, dark pants that swished as he walked. He was tall and exceedingly good-looking, and he had not taken his eyes off of us the entire time he swaggered toward us. As usual I whispered, “Just stare straight ahead.”
He smiled brightly at us when he was about twenty feet away and my daughter must have smiled back because he stopped, and in that exaggerated Italian way you see Italian men act in movies, he grabbed his heart with both hands and said, i“Ahhhh, she smile at me! She breakin’ my heart!”
We both giggled and said, “Buon giorno.” He stood still and watched us walk by, still clutching his heart, grinning with luminescent white teeth. He made us feel like we were beautiful and exotic and like we were eye candy right back at him.
One day when I’m in a nursing home drooling cream of wheat, I hope I still remember this man and his flamboyant compliment to two worn out Americans tromping down the street on exhausted legs after another hot, humid day of roaming around Rome trying to snatch every sight in three fast days, and how he made us feel like we were walking on air.
Monday, November 08, 2010
Why Credit Cards Are Evil
I recently got a bundle of blank checks from my credit card company. They send them every other day, it seems like, with exciting headings that say, “CONSOLIDATE YOUR OTHER DEBTS AND SAVE! LOW INTEREST!”
I usually tear them up because I know they’re EVIL, but yesterday I was curious just how evil they were. Let me tell you, folks, they are very, VERY evil.
I got out my 20x magnifying glass and started reading the fine print. It said, “Yo, sucka, if you decide to use these checks, you will owe us: (1) an arm, (2) a leg, (3) your first-born child, (4) your sister’s first-born child, and (5) everything else.” Trust me, these credit card companies are not after your best interests. They want your interest, and anything else they can get.
You may have heard the old saying, “If you do (blank), we’ll slap you with a fine.” This statement could, indeed, apply to the credit card companies. “If you use one of these checks, we’ll slap you with charges and interest fees so high you’ll have to climb to the top of Mt. Everest to find them.”
For example, I have two credit cards. One I use because it pays cash back bonuses. When I looked at the checks they sent (and I’m doing this from memory because I’ve already torn them up), it said I could consolidate all my other, higher interest debts into this one payment at a low interest rate. Sounds great. But here’s the catch. They wanted a fee of $10 or 5% of the value of the check, whichever was highest. Hummmm, $10 isn’t bad. I can afford that. Besides, that 5% would require me to think, or worse, remember 7th grade math.
Maybe I’m one of those people who spent 7th grade writing notes to my girlfriends or I was the boy who kept dropping pencils so he could look up girls’ skirts and didn’t have the time or inclination to pay a whole lot of attention to those lessons on percentages. What good was it going to do me? I’d never use it anyway. Maybe I’m one of those Scarlett O’Hara types and will think about it tomorrow, after the money is in my hand.
Whatever the case, these are the kinds of people the credit card companies are BANKING on, and I mean that literally. They are making masses of money on these checks, and I’ll tell you how.
In the first place, why would a smart human use these checks? They wouldn’t. But there are plenty of followers of Sarah Palin who would use these checks, and they’d use them without doing the math because they didn’t graduate from high school, or if they did, it was a GED, or by the skin of their teeth or whatever. OR they have an addiction. But whatever their background, the reason these people would use these checks is because they’re desperate for cash RIGHT NOW. If they are only desperate for $200 in cash, they’ll be okay, because they’ll only pay the $10 fee. However, if they are desperate for, say, $10,000 in cash because Guido is going to break their legs and or put their feet in a bucket of cement, or both, then they think, “Here’s how I can get that 10,000 bucks right now and it will be AT ONLY FOUR PERCENT INTEREST for SIX WHOLE MONTHS!”
So what’s the big deal? If you multiply $10,000 by .05 (Sarah, FYI that’s the way you calculate 5 percent), you get $500. FIVE HUNDRED DOLLARS! They will charge you $500 to write that check. Flat fee. No negotiating.
Immediately you owe the credit card company $10,500. And they’ll start charging their 4% or whatever interest rate on that from day one. Or they’ll give you 3 months of zero interest and then start charging a huge interest rate from then on. Either way, you’re out $500. Just think of the big screen TV you could buy for your trailer with that money if the credit card people didn’t have it.
Even though this money is touted for the use of consolidating debt, I called the credit card company and they said it could be used for anything. “Just write the check to yourself and deposit it in your bank.”
Even followers of Sarah Palin must realize that this is a scam. Do not allow yourself to be a victim of white trash politics AND credit card robbery. It’s just too tragic.
I usually tear them up because I know they’re EVIL, but yesterday I was curious just how evil they were. Let me tell you, folks, they are very, VERY evil.
I got out my 20x magnifying glass and started reading the fine print. It said, “Yo, sucka, if you decide to use these checks, you will owe us: (1) an arm, (2) a leg, (3) your first-born child, (4) your sister’s first-born child, and (5) everything else.” Trust me, these credit card companies are not after your best interests. They want your interest, and anything else they can get.
You may have heard the old saying, “If you do (blank), we’ll slap you with a fine.” This statement could, indeed, apply to the credit card companies. “If you use one of these checks, we’ll slap you with charges and interest fees so high you’ll have to climb to the top of Mt. Everest to find them.”
For example, I have two credit cards. One I use because it pays cash back bonuses. When I looked at the checks they sent (and I’m doing this from memory because I’ve already torn them up), it said I could consolidate all my other, higher interest debts into this one payment at a low interest rate. Sounds great. But here’s the catch. They wanted a fee of $10 or 5% of the value of the check, whichever was highest. Hummmm, $10 isn’t bad. I can afford that. Besides, that 5% would require me to think, or worse, remember 7th grade math.
Maybe I’m one of those people who spent 7th grade writing notes to my girlfriends or I was the boy who kept dropping pencils so he could look up girls’ skirts and didn’t have the time or inclination to pay a whole lot of attention to those lessons on percentages. What good was it going to do me? I’d never use it anyway. Maybe I’m one of those Scarlett O’Hara types and will think about it tomorrow, after the money is in my hand.
Whatever the case, these are the kinds of people the credit card companies are BANKING on, and I mean that literally. They are making masses of money on these checks, and I’ll tell you how.
In the first place, why would a smart human use these checks? They wouldn’t. But there are plenty of followers of Sarah Palin who would use these checks, and they’d use them without doing the math because they didn’t graduate from high school, or if they did, it was a GED, or by the skin of their teeth or whatever. OR they have an addiction. But whatever their background, the reason these people would use these checks is because they’re desperate for cash RIGHT NOW. If they are only desperate for $200 in cash, they’ll be okay, because they’ll only pay the $10 fee. However, if they are desperate for, say, $10,000 in cash because Guido is going to break their legs and or put their feet in a bucket of cement, or both, then they think, “Here’s how I can get that 10,000 bucks right now and it will be AT ONLY FOUR PERCENT INTEREST for SIX WHOLE MONTHS!”
So what’s the big deal? If you multiply $10,000 by .05 (Sarah, FYI that’s the way you calculate 5 percent), you get $500. FIVE HUNDRED DOLLARS! They will charge you $500 to write that check. Flat fee. No negotiating.
Immediately you owe the credit card company $10,500. And they’ll start charging their 4% or whatever interest rate on that from day one. Or they’ll give you 3 months of zero interest and then start charging a huge interest rate from then on. Either way, you’re out $500. Just think of the big screen TV you could buy for your trailer with that money if the credit card people didn’t have it.
Even though this money is touted for the use of consolidating debt, I called the credit card company and they said it could be used for anything. “Just write the check to yourself and deposit it in your bank.”
Even followers of Sarah Palin must realize that this is a scam. Do not allow yourself to be a victim of white trash politics AND credit card robbery. It’s just too tragic.
Wednesday, November 03, 2010
I Lost My Website
I lost my website! I looked under the beds, in the closets, in the back yard (in case my dog dragged it outside), behind the refrigerator, in the attic, behind my son’s ears, under both sofas, under all the sofa cushions (which was a lucrative place to look), in my car, in my daughter’s lair (generally a no-man’s land), and everywhere else but I couldn’t find it.
Then I realized that a company whose name could be pronounced Yey-Who (which is defined as a country bumpkin – and by sheer coincidence is the only word I can think of right now that rhymes with pumpkin), this company had allowed my domain name to expire. If you don’t know what a domain name is, consider yourself lucky. You are oblivious to websites and the internet. Why is this good? I don’t know, I’m blathering.
Alright, alright I’ll tell you what a domain name is. It’s the name where you reach a website or blog, such as kissmyfoot.com. The www part in front of that stands for World Wide Web – not to be confused with SLW, Simply Local Web. This web actually doesn’t really exist. I just made it up. As a matter of fact, there isn’t any other Web – world wide or otherwise – so you can get away with simply typing kissmypatootie.com without the www. You sure as heck don’t need the extra http colon forward-slash forward-slash in front of the web address, as in this example: http://www.pullmyfinger.com. Typing that to get to a website just shows that you are a rube amateur when it comes to the internet.
EXCEPT when you’re going to an FTP site. This stands for Foot Toe Pie. Ha Ha. It really stands for File Transfer Protocol, which is a fancy phrase website designers use to describe how they get stuff off their home computer (like sticky buggers) onto the World Wide Web for everyone else to partake of. But you don’t need to know anything about that because you are not a website designer.
Which leads me to why I lost my website. This certain web company I mentioned earlier whose name rhymes with BaBoo had my domain name, but they kept raising the price every year. Well, I raised a stink, so to speak, when they automatically renewed my domain name at an even higher price. I could have sworn I’d cancelled my service with them, but there was no documentation etc. etc. so I paid - but swore it would be the last time. I cancelled reordering my domain name from them, but it was about 11 months ago, and a person like me can forget a lot of stuff in 11 months, believe you me.
Since I had cancelled, when the year was up, this company didn’t warn me my domain name was going to be cancelled, and somehow I neglected to put a tickler on my calendar to remind myself. A tickler, if you don’t know, is a feather device that tickles you silly when something is coming up. It especially loves the armpits and behind the knees – it would get the bottoms of your feet if it could reach. You’ll do anything to make it stop because you’re just about to wet your pants.
So my domain name expired, unbeknownst to me, and since I’ve been working so many hours and haven’t blogged in a coon’s age and then some, I didn’t notice until one of my loving fans (and neighbor) expressed his extreme disappointment that I haven’t been filling pages of nonsense and that my website now was an advertisement from the Web company to buy frivolous stuff of no use to anyone on this, or any other, planet.
So I’m happy to say that I got my domain name – gentlehumor.com – and my website back. And the web company was nice about it all – very helpful. I hold no grudge against them except for the skyrocketing raise in prices of previous years but, hey, they’re trying to make a living too, just like the rest of us. They just believe it should be a very GOOD living.
So you, oh loyal and faithful readers, can expect many more words out of me. I can’t claim they’ll be sensible, honest, or even amusing, but, just like beans around the campfire during a cattle drive, there’ll be plenty of ‘em.
Then I realized that a company whose name could be pronounced Yey-Who (which is defined as a country bumpkin – and by sheer coincidence is the only word I can think of right now that rhymes with pumpkin), this company had allowed my domain name to expire. If you don’t know what a domain name is, consider yourself lucky. You are oblivious to websites and the internet. Why is this good? I don’t know, I’m blathering.
Alright, alright I’ll tell you what a domain name is. It’s the name where you reach a website or blog, such as kissmyfoot.com. The www part in front of that stands for World Wide Web – not to be confused with SLW, Simply Local Web. This web actually doesn’t really exist. I just made it up. As a matter of fact, there isn’t any other Web – world wide or otherwise – so you can get away with simply typing kissmypatootie.com without the www. You sure as heck don’t need the extra http colon forward-slash forward-slash in front of the web address, as in this example: http://www.pullmyfinger.com. Typing that to get to a website just shows that you are a rube amateur when it comes to the internet.
EXCEPT when you’re going to an FTP site. This stands for Foot Toe Pie. Ha Ha. It really stands for File Transfer Protocol, which is a fancy phrase website designers use to describe how they get stuff off their home computer (like sticky buggers) onto the World Wide Web for everyone else to partake of. But you don’t need to know anything about that because you are not a website designer.
Which leads me to why I lost my website. This certain web company I mentioned earlier whose name rhymes with BaBoo had my domain name, but they kept raising the price every year. Well, I raised a stink, so to speak, when they automatically renewed my domain name at an even higher price. I could have sworn I’d cancelled my service with them, but there was no documentation etc. etc. so I paid - but swore it would be the last time. I cancelled reordering my domain name from them, but it was about 11 months ago, and a person like me can forget a lot of stuff in 11 months, believe you me.
Since I had cancelled, when the year was up, this company didn’t warn me my domain name was going to be cancelled, and somehow I neglected to put a tickler on my calendar to remind myself. A tickler, if you don’t know, is a feather device that tickles you silly when something is coming up. It especially loves the armpits and behind the knees – it would get the bottoms of your feet if it could reach. You’ll do anything to make it stop because you’re just about to wet your pants.
So my domain name expired, unbeknownst to me, and since I’ve been working so many hours and haven’t blogged in a coon’s age and then some, I didn’t notice until one of my loving fans (and neighbor) expressed his extreme disappointment that I haven’t been filling pages of nonsense and that my website now was an advertisement from the Web company to buy frivolous stuff of no use to anyone on this, or any other, planet.
So I’m happy to say that I got my domain name – gentlehumor.com – and my website back. And the web company was nice about it all – very helpful. I hold no grudge against them except for the skyrocketing raise in prices of previous years but, hey, they’re trying to make a living too, just like the rest of us. They just believe it should be a very GOOD living.
So you, oh loyal and faithful readers, can expect many more words out of me. I can’t claim they’ll be sensible, honest, or even amusing, but, just like beans around the campfire during a cattle drive, there’ll be plenty of ‘em.
Monday, October 18, 2010
Everything Comes Out in the End
I had to go by a customer’s house to deliver some paperwork. I parked down on the street because the last time I went to this customer’s house I blocked the driveway when the Mrs. came home. I had my dog with me because she tags along everywhere – she’s a little black nine-pound mop and pretty portable.
This customer has a beautiful yard with that thick, unnatural grass that looks better than a golf course. Flowers were everywhere. The homeowners had their door open and I could hear the clanking of utensils on kitchenware – they were either eating or preparing dinner. I thought I could see the Mrs. through the giant picture window setting the formal dining room table.
I didn’t want to leave the dog in the car because she barks her fool head off, so I let her out. I figured it would be safe because I’d seen her a couple of hours earlier doing a doggie do-do and she usually only does one a day.
She jumped out of the car and ran up the driveway so that she was in the middle of the yard right in front of the picture window. She hunched over and I knew this was not going to be a wee-wee. She strained for an eternity and then dropped a Tootsie Roll right in the middle of that beautiful yard. I was SO embarrassed.
I walked all the way back to the car, got a baggie, and tromped over to the place she went so I could clean it up. Of course I couldn’t find it, so I had to pace back and forth in front of that picture window in a searching grid until I finally found it.
I scurried back to the car and placed the bagged-up turd on the street where I wouldn’t miss it, then started back up the long driveway. The dog had moved closer to the house when I saw her hunched over again. She had to go for a record-breaking third time in one day.
I turned around and went back to the car for another baggie, then made my way up the driveway to the latest atrocity on the customer’s lawn, cleaned it up, then walked all the way down the driveway again. I never knew if the homeowner was watching or not, but I was SO embarrassed.
I don’t know why a dog has to hunch over at the worst possible times. It’s uncanny how they have such amazing timing. You can be with a dog all day long, let it out several times, see it actually go, and then when you’re at a nice place the dog manages to reach deep into its own bowels and produce a calling card on the nice people’s well-groomed lawn. It’s pretty remarkable, all things considered. The only worse thing is when your dog starts mounting the leg of the elderly lady next to you and she’s too old and wobbly to shake it off so she starts flailing at it with her purse, which only causes the dog to re-double its efforts. When those dogs get determined, you can’t shake them off either. You just have to ride it out.
I delivered my papers and the homeowner pretended not to have seen me criss-crossing her yard with baggies cleaning up little piles here and there. All things taken into consideration, everything came out well in the end. Just ask my dog.
This customer has a beautiful yard with that thick, unnatural grass that looks better than a golf course. Flowers were everywhere. The homeowners had their door open and I could hear the clanking of utensils on kitchenware – they were either eating or preparing dinner. I thought I could see the Mrs. through the giant picture window setting the formal dining room table.
I didn’t want to leave the dog in the car because she barks her fool head off, so I let her out. I figured it would be safe because I’d seen her a couple of hours earlier doing a doggie do-do and she usually only does one a day.
She jumped out of the car and ran up the driveway so that she was in the middle of the yard right in front of the picture window. She hunched over and I knew this was not going to be a wee-wee. She strained for an eternity and then dropped a Tootsie Roll right in the middle of that beautiful yard. I was SO embarrassed.
I walked all the way back to the car, got a baggie, and tromped over to the place she went so I could clean it up. Of course I couldn’t find it, so I had to pace back and forth in front of that picture window in a searching grid until I finally found it.
I scurried back to the car and placed the bagged-up turd on the street where I wouldn’t miss it, then started back up the long driveway. The dog had moved closer to the house when I saw her hunched over again. She had to go for a record-breaking third time in one day.
I turned around and went back to the car for another baggie, then made my way up the driveway to the latest atrocity on the customer’s lawn, cleaned it up, then walked all the way down the driveway again. I never knew if the homeowner was watching or not, but I was SO embarrassed.
I don’t know why a dog has to hunch over at the worst possible times. It’s uncanny how they have such amazing timing. You can be with a dog all day long, let it out several times, see it actually go, and then when you’re at a nice place the dog manages to reach deep into its own bowels and produce a calling card on the nice people’s well-groomed lawn. It’s pretty remarkable, all things considered. The only worse thing is when your dog starts mounting the leg of the elderly lady next to you and she’s too old and wobbly to shake it off so she starts flailing at it with her purse, which only causes the dog to re-double its efforts. When those dogs get determined, you can’t shake them off either. You just have to ride it out.
I delivered my papers and the homeowner pretended not to have seen me criss-crossing her yard with baggies cleaning up little piles here and there. All things taken into consideration, everything came out well in the end. Just ask my dog.
Sunday, October 17, 2010
On the Blogging Homestretch
I have written 326 blogs. My goal was 365, and I have been slacking lately because I’ve been busy and tired. But I’m jumping back on the horse and I’m going to make it to the finish line. And by that I mean, I’m going to get up right this minute and get myself a fistful of chocolate chips because I’ll need strength to proceed with this 327th blog tonight.
The reason is that I went with my husband on a 9 mile hike today. I am give out, as they say in the south. Worn to a frazzle. I feel like I’ve been rode hard and put away wet. I’ve been dragged under something, I can’t remember what but there’s a saying that would definitely describe the throbbing in my thighs and the burning in my feet.
The hike was lovely, we just didn’t realize it was going to be so long. We thought it would be 4.5 miles total, which was doable. Turned out it was double. We also didn’t realize that it would be a steady incline without a break all the way to Ramona Falls. My husband was grunting and moaning like a constipated bear. He is not inclined toward inclines, you might say.
Boy those chocolate chips are good, but typing about them has brought about a major annoyance with my Word for Mac program. Oh, and BTW, I got a new MacBook Pro. I really like it except there isn’t a delete button. There is, but it only deletes backwards. There’s no way to delete forwards, which comes in handy and my deletion method of choice. Other than that I really like this laptop.
But the Word thing is annoying because sometimes when I start typing a word, some person’s name comes up and, as luck would have it, the name is some annoying individual that I served on a committee with years ago who I’d rather forget. In the case of the chocolate chips, a certain individual named “Chip ______” popped up. This person was universally despised by everyone on the high school snowboard team I was in charge of because he was the chairman of the board - a power junkie who thought he was cool and who made flippant decisions in the “because I said so” vein that annoyed me like someone coughing non-stop in a movie. Even though it has been four years since I’ve had to deal with this individual, thinking about him makes me want to pass gas.
Because of the way Word makes his name come up when I type chocolate chip (there it went again), I have to either stop talking about chocolate chips so I don’t remember him, or else go around passing gas like a bulldog. If you know how to turn those little pop-up window things off, please, PLEASE let me know.
What’s that I hear. My bed is calling me. “I’M COMING, JUST A SECOND.” I guess I’d better go now.
I have written 326 blogs. My goal was 365, and I have been slacking lately because I’ve been busy and tired. But I’m jumping back on the horse and I’m going to make it to the finish line. And by that I mean, I’m going to get up right this minute and get myself a fistful of chocolate chips because I’ll need strength to proceed with this 327th blog tonight.
The reason is that I went with my husband on a 9 mile hike today. I am give out, as they say in the south. Worn to a frazzle. I feel like I’ve been rode hard and put away wet. I’ve been dragged under something, I can’t remember what but there’s a saying that would definitely describe the throbbing in my thighs and the burning in my feet.
The hike was lovely, we just didn’t realize it was going to be so long. We thought it would be 4.5 miles total, which was doable. Turned out it was double. We also didn’t realize that it would be a steady incline without a break all the way to Ramona Falls. My husband was grunting and moaning like a constipated bear. He is not inclined toward inclines, you might say.
Boy those chocolate chips are good, but typing about them has brought about a major annoyance with my Word for Mac program. Oh, and BTW, I got a new MacBook Pro. I really like it except there isn’t a delete button. There is, but it only deletes backwards. There’s no way to delete forwards, which comes in handy and my deletion method of choice. Other than that I really like this laptop.
But the Word thing is annoying because sometimes when I start typing a word, some person’s name comes up and, as luck would have it, the name is some annoying individual that I served on a committee with years ago who I’d rather forget. In the case of the chocolate chips, a certain individual named “Chip ______” popped up. This person was universally despised by everyone on the high school snowboard team I was in charge of because he was the chairman of the board - a power junkie who thought he was cool and who made flippant decisions in the “because I said so” vein that annoyed me like someone coughing non-stop in a movie. Even though it has been four years since I’ve had to deal with this individual, thinking about him makes me want to pass gas.
Because of the way Word makes his name come up when I type chocolate chip (there it went again), I have to either stop talking about chocolate chips so I don’t remember him, or else go around passing gas like a bulldog. If you know how to turn those little pop-up window things off, please, PLEASE let me know.
What’s that I hear. My bed is calling me. “I’M COMING, JUST A SECOND.” I guess I’d better go now.
The reason is that I went with my husband on a 9 mile hike today. I am give out, as they say in the south. Worn to a frazzle. I feel like I’ve been rode hard and put away wet. I’ve been dragged under something, I can’t remember what but there’s a saying that would definitely describe the throbbing in my thighs and the burning in my feet.
The hike was lovely, we just didn’t realize it was going to be so long. We thought it would be 4.5 miles total, which was doable. Turned out it was double. We also didn’t realize that it would be a steady incline without a break all the way to Ramona Falls. My husband was grunting and moaning like a constipated bear. He is not inclined toward inclines, you might say.
Boy those chocolate chips are good, but typing about them has brought about a major annoyance with my Word for Mac program. Oh, and BTW, I got a new MacBook Pro. I really like it except there isn’t a delete button. There is, but it only deletes backwards. There’s no way to delete forwards, which comes in handy and my deletion method of choice. Other than that I really like this laptop.
But the Word thing is annoying because sometimes when I start typing a word, some person’s name comes up and, as luck would have it, the name is some annoying individual that I served on a committee with years ago who I’d rather forget. In the case of the chocolate chips, a certain individual named “Chip ______” popped up. This person was universally despised by everyone on the high school snowboard team I was in charge of because he was the chairman of the board - a power junkie who thought he was cool and who made flippant decisions in the “because I said so” vein that annoyed me like someone coughing non-stop in a movie. Even though it has been four years since I’ve had to deal with this individual, thinking about him makes me want to pass gas.
Because of the way Word makes his name come up when I type chocolate chip (there it went again), I have to either stop talking about chocolate chips so I don’t remember him, or else go around passing gas like a bulldog. If you know how to turn those little pop-up window things off, please, PLEASE let me know.
What’s that I hear. My bed is calling me. “I’M COMING, JUST A SECOND.” I guess I’d better go now.
I have written 326 blogs. My goal was 365, and I have been slacking lately because I’ve been busy and tired. But I’m jumping back on the horse and I’m going to make it to the finish line. And by that I mean, I’m going to get up right this minute and get myself a fistful of chocolate chips because I’ll need strength to proceed with this 327th blog tonight.
The reason is that I went with my husband on a 9 mile hike today. I am give out, as they say in the south. Worn to a frazzle. I feel like I’ve been rode hard and put away wet. I’ve been dragged under something, I can’t remember what but there’s a saying that would definitely describe the throbbing in my thighs and the burning in my feet.
The hike was lovely, we just didn’t realize it was going to be so long. We thought it would be 4.5 miles total, which was doable. Turned out it was double. We also didn’t realize that it would be a steady incline without a break all the way to Ramona Falls. My husband was grunting and moaning like a constipated bear. He is not inclined toward inclines, you might say.
Boy those chocolate chips are good, but typing about them has brought about a major annoyance with my Word for Mac program. Oh, and BTW, I got a new MacBook Pro. I really like it except there isn’t a delete button. There is, but it only deletes backwards. There’s no way to delete forwards, which comes in handy and my deletion method of choice. Other than that I really like this laptop.
But the Word thing is annoying because sometimes when I start typing a word, some person’s name comes up and, as luck would have it, the name is some annoying individual that I served on a committee with years ago who I’d rather forget. In the case of the chocolate chips, a certain individual named “Chip ______” popped up. This person was universally despised by everyone on the high school snowboard team I was in charge of because he was the chairman of the board - a power junkie who thought he was cool and who made flippant decisions in the “because I said so” vein that annoyed me like someone coughing non-stop in a movie. Even though it has been four years since I’ve had to deal with this individual, thinking about him makes me want to pass gas.
Because of the way Word makes his name come up when I type chocolate chip (there it went again), I have to either stop talking about chocolate chips so I don’t remember him, or else go around passing gas like a bulldog. If you know how to turn those little pop-up window things off, please, PLEASE let me know.
What’s that I hear. My bed is calling me. “I’M COMING, JUST A SECOND.” I guess I’d better go now.
Tuesday, October 12, 2010
A Marathon of Biblical Proportions
Missed me? I have to apologize right now for taking a week-long sabbatical. Don’t you just hate it when work interferes with doing what you want to do, ie write humor? I have found that being physically and mentally exhausted makes me more cranky and less funny. Who would have thought there would be a correlation?
I could use this as a whine and complain session, but you haven’t waited all this time to hear my woes and sorrows. Well, some of you may have. Some people seem to thrive on listening to others complain. They ask questions that keep disgruntled people talking. Questions like, “How have you been?” or “How’s work going?” These innocent prompts often lead to a virtual torrent of miseries of Biblical proportions.
In case you don’t know what Biblical proportions is, I’ll explain. In the Bible, you got your 40 days and 40 nights of rain, you got your turning all the people of whole towns into statues made of salt, you got your locusts covering the earth. These are things that trump every awful thing you could imagine – thusly, this term is used to describe something extraordinarily out of proportion.
I happened to use that saying this past weekend with my neighbor, Sunny. She was one of twenty people who volunteered with me to help at the Portland Marathon. It was raining cats and dogs – it was raining buckets – someone had opened the floodgates in the sky - in other words, it was a rain “of Biblical proportions.”
We were all bundled up with sweatshirts and raingear, hats and gloves. Our job was to give water and “ultima replenisher” to Marathoners and cheer them on to the finish line (we were at mile 25 of the 26 point something race - I could look it up but I don’t have internet right this instant). The whole thing was quite entertaining. First, they lined two big gray plastic garbage cans with a plastic bag and filled them with water from a fire hydrant. Then we dipped pitchers of water into the cans and filled hundreds of plastic cups. In the other can we mixed the Ultima replenisher, which probably tasted like sweetened ocean water. I didn’t try it because I’m not a huge fan of salty sweet liquids. The runners seemed to like it, though.
We’d hold our arms out with the cups and they’d run by and grab them. This would have been great fun if not for the fact that they grabbed the cups from the first couple of people in the line, and the rest of us stood there with one cup for so long the water got warm. I gave out two cups of water. I wasn’t on the line the whole time, though. My T-shirt said, “Area captain.” It had been made for Goliath – a Biblical character who was a giant. Since, as the story goes, David slew Goliath, he wasn’t there, so I got to wear the giant’s t-shirt, which came to my knees and kept getting longer as it got wetter. I walked along policing the line and trying to get people to stand behind the orange cones that were supposed to be the line. The problem was that these people were desperate to give the runners a drink. So they started easing out, and if you stayed behind the cone like you were supposed to, you’d be there all by yourself because everyone else had eased in. Pretty soon the runners were practically elbowing their way through the funnel of people trying to get them to take a cup of water, so I had to beat the crowd back to the cones over and over.
Had it been a sunny, warm day, I think the runners would have partaken of our offerings more. However, cold rain doesn’t seem to make people thirsty. Plus, many of them had on little water bottle packs so they didn’t need water. But that didn’t stop our enthusiasm. The high school students, including my daughter, cheered everyone on with spry and happy salutations that were quite clever. Some people had their names on their bibs (or jerseys), and some of the names were pretty fun – not your usual “Jason and Heather.” Some of them had names like, “Mom of 4” and “Billy Bob McGee.” So the kids were yelling, “Way to go Kokomo Joe,” and “You can do it, Betty Boop.”
We had about 12 tables set up with beverages because we’d gone to a meeting that told us to keep the tables full of water because we’d go through them so fast. We were supposed to stack them as much as 4 high with layers of cardboard in between so we wouldn’t run out. The cardboard got soaked so we had to abandon that after awhile, but we diligently refilled cups until rows upon rows upon rows of filled cups covered every square inch of every table. At the end of the race, we had to pour out many, many cups. This was a case of too much of a good thing. It was a veritable waste of Biblical proportions, but c’est la vie! Which is French and pronounced, “Parley voo Fron-say” and means, “The show’s over. Everyone go back to your homes and families. There’s nothing more to see here. Break it up, now. C’mon, keep moving, that’s right, keep moving.”
It was a good experience all the way around, except for the men whose nipples bled little waterfalls of red on their shirts – red blood all the way to their waists. Someone had warned me I’d see this. It’s caused by 26 point something miles of shirt bouncing and the associated chafing. If I were a man, I’d get me a man-bra in nothing flat. I would not have bleeding nipples, but that’s just me. We used to have a local band around here called Sweaty Nipples. I’ve got a story to tell about that one of these days.
I want to point out to you who have made it this far that I have not complained even though I’ve got plenty to complain about – i.e. lack of sleep etc. etc. but I will not bore you with that no matter how much of a sicko you are and how much you want to know my miseries. Maybe tomorrow, though.
I could use this as a whine and complain session, but you haven’t waited all this time to hear my woes and sorrows. Well, some of you may have. Some people seem to thrive on listening to others complain. They ask questions that keep disgruntled people talking. Questions like, “How have you been?” or “How’s work going?” These innocent prompts often lead to a virtual torrent of miseries of Biblical proportions.
In case you don’t know what Biblical proportions is, I’ll explain. In the Bible, you got your 40 days and 40 nights of rain, you got your turning all the people of whole towns into statues made of salt, you got your locusts covering the earth. These are things that trump every awful thing you could imagine – thusly, this term is used to describe something extraordinarily out of proportion.
I happened to use that saying this past weekend with my neighbor, Sunny. She was one of twenty people who volunteered with me to help at the Portland Marathon. It was raining cats and dogs – it was raining buckets – someone had opened the floodgates in the sky - in other words, it was a rain “of Biblical proportions.”
We were all bundled up with sweatshirts and raingear, hats and gloves. Our job was to give water and “ultima replenisher” to Marathoners and cheer them on to the finish line (we were at mile 25 of the 26 point something race - I could look it up but I don’t have internet right this instant). The whole thing was quite entertaining. First, they lined two big gray plastic garbage cans with a plastic bag and filled them with water from a fire hydrant. Then we dipped pitchers of water into the cans and filled hundreds of plastic cups. In the other can we mixed the Ultima replenisher, which probably tasted like sweetened ocean water. I didn’t try it because I’m not a huge fan of salty sweet liquids. The runners seemed to like it, though.
We’d hold our arms out with the cups and they’d run by and grab them. This would have been great fun if not for the fact that they grabbed the cups from the first couple of people in the line, and the rest of us stood there with one cup for so long the water got warm. I gave out two cups of water. I wasn’t on the line the whole time, though. My T-shirt said, “Area captain.” It had been made for Goliath – a Biblical character who was a giant. Since, as the story goes, David slew Goliath, he wasn’t there, so I got to wear the giant’s t-shirt, which came to my knees and kept getting longer as it got wetter. I walked along policing the line and trying to get people to stand behind the orange cones that were supposed to be the line. The problem was that these people were desperate to give the runners a drink. So they started easing out, and if you stayed behind the cone like you were supposed to, you’d be there all by yourself because everyone else had eased in. Pretty soon the runners were practically elbowing their way through the funnel of people trying to get them to take a cup of water, so I had to beat the crowd back to the cones over and over.
Had it been a sunny, warm day, I think the runners would have partaken of our offerings more. However, cold rain doesn’t seem to make people thirsty. Plus, many of them had on little water bottle packs so they didn’t need water. But that didn’t stop our enthusiasm. The high school students, including my daughter, cheered everyone on with spry and happy salutations that were quite clever. Some people had their names on their bibs (or jerseys), and some of the names were pretty fun – not your usual “Jason and Heather.” Some of them had names like, “Mom of 4” and “Billy Bob McGee.” So the kids were yelling, “Way to go Kokomo Joe,” and “You can do it, Betty Boop.”
We had about 12 tables set up with beverages because we’d gone to a meeting that told us to keep the tables full of water because we’d go through them so fast. We were supposed to stack them as much as 4 high with layers of cardboard in between so we wouldn’t run out. The cardboard got soaked so we had to abandon that after awhile, but we diligently refilled cups until rows upon rows upon rows of filled cups covered every square inch of every table. At the end of the race, we had to pour out many, many cups. This was a case of too much of a good thing. It was a veritable waste of Biblical proportions, but c’est la vie! Which is French and pronounced, “Parley voo Fron-say” and means, “The show’s over. Everyone go back to your homes and families. There’s nothing more to see here. Break it up, now. C’mon, keep moving, that’s right, keep moving.”
It was a good experience all the way around, except for the men whose nipples bled little waterfalls of red on their shirts – red blood all the way to their waists. Someone had warned me I’d see this. It’s caused by 26 point something miles of shirt bouncing and the associated chafing. If I were a man, I’d get me a man-bra in nothing flat. I would not have bleeding nipples, but that’s just me. We used to have a local band around here called Sweaty Nipples. I’ve got a story to tell about that one of these days.
I want to point out to you who have made it this far that I have not complained even though I’ve got plenty to complain about – i.e. lack of sleep etc. etc. but I will not bore you with that no matter how much of a sicko you are and how much you want to know my miseries. Maybe tomorrow, though.
Tuesday, October 05, 2010
Why I'm No Longer Embarrassed
The beauty of getting older is that you don’t have to suffer through embarrassment anymore. I remember being in my teens and EVERYTHING embarrassed me. If I walked out of a bathroom with toilet paper clinging to my shoe, it was enough to make me want to commit suicide.
All I ever wanted to do back then was blend in and not make a spectacle of myself. I’d rather skip a class than walk in late. Embarrassment kept me from doing many things I wanted to do.
Now it doesn’t bother me a bit to straggle in late to something. I have been late to golf tournaments and either (1) begged a golf pro to give me a ride out to the hole or (2) run across several fairways trying to catch up with my team. I wave at everyone I pass and don’t think a thing about it except to muse about what they must be thinking.
Certainly it’s better not to get into situations where I’d be late, but now I see that it’s more important to play the game than it is to worry about what people are going to think of me. I know my team would rather have me there – I get lucky and hit a decent shot every now and then. I also know that just about anything can be forgiven if you are very kind to people.
I’m not embarrassed about what I say anymore either. One time I was in a parking lot around Christmas and I was waiting for someone to back up so I could get their space. It was someone really slow, and they eased out, taking an eternity. When they finally got out of the way and I was easing in, a car came out of nowhere and whipped into the space. A trashy woman and her tattooed boyfriend got out – she was driving. I yelled, “Hey, you took my space.” She yelled back, “I got there first.” I yelled, “But I was waiting for it.” And she yelled, “So?” And I yelled back, “You’re nothing but white trash.”
My daughter literally dived into the floorboard of my car. “Oh my gosh, Mom, please tell me you didn’t just yell across the parking lot and call someone white trash in front of all these people.”
“Well, she is,” I said.
My daughter is embarrassed about everything, and she was shocked at this. We had just been to church. “What if someone from church heard you?” she asked. She was stalling for time and didn’t want to get up, even though the white trashy woman had already waddled into the store. Her boyfriend at least had the decency to look sheepish and shrug his shoulders as if he agreed with me but what could he do?
Years ago I would never have confronted that woman, and maybe I’m white trash myself for doing it now, but I just don’t care. If someone I knew had heard me, I would have been mortified, I guess, but I would have made the best of it.
Maybe that’s the difference. Maybe it’s not so much the fear of embarrassment anymore, it’s knowing that, whatever happens, I’ll manage to get through either by being witty or silly or apologetic or whatever the circumstance calls for. Plus I’ve discovered as I’ve gotten older that people don’t pay that much attention to my goings-on. Nobody’s waiting around to see what I might do and pass judgment on it.
If I could give advice to teenagers, I’d say, “Don’t let fear of embarrassment hold you back from anything you want to do.” I’d have a whole ton of other advice, too, if any of them would ever listen, which they won’t. Especially if they’re related to me.
All I ever wanted to do back then was blend in and not make a spectacle of myself. I’d rather skip a class than walk in late. Embarrassment kept me from doing many things I wanted to do.
Now it doesn’t bother me a bit to straggle in late to something. I have been late to golf tournaments and either (1) begged a golf pro to give me a ride out to the hole or (2) run across several fairways trying to catch up with my team. I wave at everyone I pass and don’t think a thing about it except to muse about what they must be thinking.
Certainly it’s better not to get into situations where I’d be late, but now I see that it’s more important to play the game than it is to worry about what people are going to think of me. I know my team would rather have me there – I get lucky and hit a decent shot every now and then. I also know that just about anything can be forgiven if you are very kind to people.
I’m not embarrassed about what I say anymore either. One time I was in a parking lot around Christmas and I was waiting for someone to back up so I could get their space. It was someone really slow, and they eased out, taking an eternity. When they finally got out of the way and I was easing in, a car came out of nowhere and whipped into the space. A trashy woman and her tattooed boyfriend got out – she was driving. I yelled, “Hey, you took my space.” She yelled back, “I got there first.” I yelled, “But I was waiting for it.” And she yelled, “So?” And I yelled back, “You’re nothing but white trash.”
My daughter literally dived into the floorboard of my car. “Oh my gosh, Mom, please tell me you didn’t just yell across the parking lot and call someone white trash in front of all these people.”
“Well, she is,” I said.
My daughter is embarrassed about everything, and she was shocked at this. We had just been to church. “What if someone from church heard you?” she asked. She was stalling for time and didn’t want to get up, even though the white trashy woman had already waddled into the store. Her boyfriend at least had the decency to look sheepish and shrug his shoulders as if he agreed with me but what could he do?
Years ago I would never have confronted that woman, and maybe I’m white trash myself for doing it now, but I just don’t care. If someone I knew had heard me, I would have been mortified, I guess, but I would have made the best of it.
Maybe that’s the difference. Maybe it’s not so much the fear of embarrassment anymore, it’s knowing that, whatever happens, I’ll manage to get through either by being witty or silly or apologetic or whatever the circumstance calls for. Plus I’ve discovered as I’ve gotten older that people don’t pay that much attention to my goings-on. Nobody’s waiting around to see what I might do and pass judgment on it.
If I could give advice to teenagers, I’d say, “Don’t let fear of embarrassment hold you back from anything you want to do.” I’d have a whole ton of other advice, too, if any of them would ever listen, which they won’t. Especially if they’re related to me.
Monday, October 04, 2010
Updates in Case You're Interested
The police are still getting speeders along the road where I got a ticket last week. They had pulled over two different cars when I went by today. I’ve witnessed them pulling over at least a dozen people just in the short time I pass there each day. As for me, I put my car on cruise control as I approach the area so I don’t accidently exceed the speed limit.
I hate that I have to be careful now. No rolling stops at stop signs, even when there’s not another car for miles. No more sudden U-turns when I’ve missed my street. I tell you, being on the lam (or trying to avoid the Law) is hard work. (In the south we call policemen “the Law.”)
I tell you what’s really hard work, though. It’s working full-time and then going home and having to be a mom. I got to be a stay home mom, and I didn’t know how good I had it. I knew I was lucky, but it wasn’t until I started this full-time job that I realized how hard working moms work.
Of course I had kid crises to deal with all day long, which could wear on your nerves, but I can’t imagine working a stressful job and then coming home and dealing with kids. I have a new respect for working mothers, although I would not have given up those stay-home years for all the gold in China. We used to feel a little inferior to those moms with their briefcases, but now I don’t envy them a bit. They must have been exhausted all the time.
This is off the subject, but my husband went to Costco and got a five-pound bag of Halloween candy. Oh my gosh, it’s all the best stuff, too. Milky Ways and M & M’s and Almond Joys and Hersheys and Resses cups. They’re in little sizes so it’s perfect. I can have a couple of those and feel like I’ve gotten a good dose of chocolate without busting a button. I was thinking about it because there are candy wrappers on my mouse pad. I wonder how long that bag will last. My daughter and her friends will mow through it like a bush hog.
My dog smells like Fritos. Honestly, her feet especially smell just like a bag of Fritos. Sometimes it makes me want to eat Fritos – having that smell around me all day because she’s a lap dog and I take her to work. She whines until I pick her up, and then I feel like I could use a little bag of Fritos to top off my morning.
Good gracious if I don’t turn into a big fat lard, it won’t be because I don’t have the opportunity. My husband also made peanut butter cookies AND a plum tart. I made pumpkin coffeecake to take to work. It’s all good, especially coupled with those little bags of chocolate delights.
Hungry yet? I am, and I’m full. Only in America do we eat for the taste of food even when we’ve stuffed ourselves with cheese enchiladas just a couple of hours ago. Boy, you know what sounds good? M & M’s and Fritos. Excuse me while I go fetch a nibble. I think I’ll head on to bed afterward, I need to get into my elastic waist pajamas and lie on my back. Oh the belly…moan...groan….ooooooohhhhh.
I hate that I have to be careful now. No rolling stops at stop signs, even when there’s not another car for miles. No more sudden U-turns when I’ve missed my street. I tell you, being on the lam (or trying to avoid the Law) is hard work. (In the south we call policemen “the Law.”)
I tell you what’s really hard work, though. It’s working full-time and then going home and having to be a mom. I got to be a stay home mom, and I didn’t know how good I had it. I knew I was lucky, but it wasn’t until I started this full-time job that I realized how hard working moms work.
Of course I had kid crises to deal with all day long, which could wear on your nerves, but I can’t imagine working a stressful job and then coming home and dealing with kids. I have a new respect for working mothers, although I would not have given up those stay-home years for all the gold in China. We used to feel a little inferior to those moms with their briefcases, but now I don’t envy them a bit. They must have been exhausted all the time.
This is off the subject, but my husband went to Costco and got a five-pound bag of Halloween candy. Oh my gosh, it’s all the best stuff, too. Milky Ways and M & M’s and Almond Joys and Hersheys and Resses cups. They’re in little sizes so it’s perfect. I can have a couple of those and feel like I’ve gotten a good dose of chocolate without busting a button. I was thinking about it because there are candy wrappers on my mouse pad. I wonder how long that bag will last. My daughter and her friends will mow through it like a bush hog.
My dog smells like Fritos. Honestly, her feet especially smell just like a bag of Fritos. Sometimes it makes me want to eat Fritos – having that smell around me all day because she’s a lap dog and I take her to work. She whines until I pick her up, and then I feel like I could use a little bag of Fritos to top off my morning.
Good gracious if I don’t turn into a big fat lard, it won’t be because I don’t have the opportunity. My husband also made peanut butter cookies AND a plum tart. I made pumpkin coffeecake to take to work. It’s all good, especially coupled with those little bags of chocolate delights.
Hungry yet? I am, and I’m full. Only in America do we eat for the taste of food even when we’ve stuffed ourselves with cheese enchiladas just a couple of hours ago. Boy, you know what sounds good? M & M’s and Fritos. Excuse me while I go fetch a nibble. I think I’ll head on to bed afterward, I need to get into my elastic waist pajamas and lie on my back. Oh the belly…moan...groan….ooooooohhhhh.
Sunday, October 03, 2010
Too Much of a Good Thing
I talked with my cousin Nancy from Memphis a little while ago. She was telling me how the University of Memphis campus has changed since we were at school there.
“The clearest memory I have of the campus and buildings is the parking lot on the way to Central Towers,” I said.
“How come?” she asked.
“Because that was the place I saw that guy squatted down between two parked cars man-handling himself. That thing was sticking up in the air so long it would have scared a horse.”
“I think I saw that same guy. Did he have red hair?”
“I don’t know, all I saw was about 17 inches of man flesh bobbing up and down.”
“The guy I saw was behind a bush just going at it with that man root.”
“Man root?” I laughed.
“You’ve never heard it called ‘man root’?”
“Never have, but that’s what I’m going to call it from now on.”
“Well,” Nancy said, “you talk about long. When I went to spend some time with my dad in Trinidad one summer while he was in Naval Intelligence, he set me up to stay with this young couple who had a house. The husband worked with him. Anyway, this guy’s wife was this sweet little thing, innocent and really pretty. I liked her a lot, but he was a creep.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. His man root was so big you could see the mass of it in his shorts, like he had some kind of creature in there. It rolled around when he walked. Sometimes the tip would poke out the end of his shorts. I’m not kidding, it was like nothing you’ve ever seen.”
I don’t know why, but talking about this part of a man makes me laugh hysterically. I was nearly bent over double.
“One time we were all sitting in the living room, and his wife was in a chair where she had to twist her head away to see the TV. He took that thing out and was rolling it around in his lap, like he was stroking a pet. It was as big as one of those things kids float around on in a pool – one of those noodles. I could see him out of the corner of my eye. He was unbelievable. Biggest thing I’ve ever seen. Like something that should be in Ripley’s Believe It or Not.”
“What did you do?”
“I couldn’t tell my dad because he would have killed him. And I really liked his wife, so I didn’t want to make any trouble. I was in high school and didn’t know what to do. Luckily I had a girlfriend there and asked if I could stay with her and her family, so I switched places with my dad’s blessing and he never found out.”
We laughed some more about unbelievable sizes and getting out of crazy situations. What’s so odd is that just about every woman I know has a story similar to this. Let me go on record right now, and I think I speak for most women, that those things are not, generally speaking, an appealing sightt to women. Even Tarzan had enough sense to wear a loincloth. Men, please keep those things under lock and key. And I don’t care what you might think, bigger is not better. I would run like I was being chased by a swarm of hornets if something like that tried to cozy up to me. Oooo, gives me the eevy jeevies just thinking about it.
“The clearest memory I have of the campus and buildings is the parking lot on the way to Central Towers,” I said.
“How come?” she asked.
“Because that was the place I saw that guy squatted down between two parked cars man-handling himself. That thing was sticking up in the air so long it would have scared a horse.”
“I think I saw that same guy. Did he have red hair?”
“I don’t know, all I saw was about 17 inches of man flesh bobbing up and down.”
“The guy I saw was behind a bush just going at it with that man root.”
“Man root?” I laughed.
“You’ve never heard it called ‘man root’?”
“Never have, but that’s what I’m going to call it from now on.”
“Well,” Nancy said, “you talk about long. When I went to spend some time with my dad in Trinidad one summer while he was in Naval Intelligence, he set me up to stay with this young couple who had a house. The husband worked with him. Anyway, this guy’s wife was this sweet little thing, innocent and really pretty. I liked her a lot, but he was a creep.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. His man root was so big you could see the mass of it in his shorts, like he had some kind of creature in there. It rolled around when he walked. Sometimes the tip would poke out the end of his shorts. I’m not kidding, it was like nothing you’ve ever seen.”
I don’t know why, but talking about this part of a man makes me laugh hysterically. I was nearly bent over double.
“One time we were all sitting in the living room, and his wife was in a chair where she had to twist her head away to see the TV. He took that thing out and was rolling it around in his lap, like he was stroking a pet. It was as big as one of those things kids float around on in a pool – one of those noodles. I could see him out of the corner of my eye. He was unbelievable. Biggest thing I’ve ever seen. Like something that should be in Ripley’s Believe It or Not.”
“What did you do?”
“I couldn’t tell my dad because he would have killed him. And I really liked his wife, so I didn’t want to make any trouble. I was in high school and didn’t know what to do. Luckily I had a girlfriend there and asked if I could stay with her and her family, so I switched places with my dad’s blessing and he never found out.”
We laughed some more about unbelievable sizes and getting out of crazy situations. What’s so odd is that just about every woman I know has a story similar to this. Let me go on record right now, and I think I speak for most women, that those things are not, generally speaking, an appealing sightt to women. Even Tarzan had enough sense to wear a loincloth. Men, please keep those things under lock and key. And I don’t care what you might think, bigger is not better. I would run like I was being chased by a swarm of hornets if something like that tried to cozy up to me. Oooo, gives me the eevy jeevies just thinking about it.
Scary Beavers and Ducks
What a fantastic day for football in Oregon. Both the Oregon Ducks and the Beavers won their games today. I got to enjoy the Beavers game in person.
I think it is amazing, however, that the two most famous colleges in this state could not come up with more fierce sounding mascots than Ducks and Beavers.
The Oregon State Beavers at least try to make their mascot seem ferocious. On the giant screen on the scoreboards, the cartoon Beaver has a chainsaw. When the other team gets a third down, the Beaver fires up the chainsaw and starts cutting down trees one after the other. He gets a determined look in his eyes.
At least the Beaver can get a little respect because, even though he’s a water dwelling varmint who makes his living gnawing on trees, he’s smart enough to use a piece of equipment to shred his opponents – at least psychologically. Whenever the chainsaw starts, the crowd roars and this, in turn, has a negative effect on the opposing team.
But what about the University of Oregon Duck? What’s he going to do to his adversaries? Quack them into begging for mercy? “Oh please Mr. Duck, please don’t quack at us any more.”
Or perhaps the Duck could slap them around with his webfeet. I’m just not seeing it. A duck does not bring fear and trembling into my heart.
That Duck is nothing to mess with, though. When the team scores, he gets down and does pushups for the number of points scored. He had to do 51 pushups today in the game against Stanford. The crowd counts along to keep him honest. That’s got to be one strong Duck, though he doesn’t go all the way down.
Speaking of going down, I’m taking a PE course and they wanted us to do a physical assessment on the first day. I thought I could do about 30 pushups, but I’ve apparently been doing them wrong because I could only do seven the way the PE teacher wanted them done. She made me go all the way down so that my elbows were at a 90-degree angle. Do you know how hard that is? It’s really, really hard, that’s how hard. Try it if you don’t believe me.
But where was I? Oh yeah, at the game today. We sat down in our seats and were smacked with a waft of BO that hit me like the breath from a garbage-eating dragon. It was really acrid. There was a gentleman sitting upwind of us who was as big as two men. My husband said, “I bet that’s where it’s coming from.” Now this might have been a mean thing to say, and perhaps it wasn’t nice to stereotype, but I think that was precisely where the foul odor was coming from.
“Have you got anything aromatic in your backpack?” I asked. My husband dug around but all he could find was a roll of Life Savers. I rubbed a cherry one just under my nose so I could smell cherry instead of armpit. It worked somewhat.
The day was fun, I got to each a ton of potato chips. I love chips. There can be a table full of exotic foods and I’ll just sit beside the potato chips and gorge on them the whole time. I’ll eat the exotic foods, too, but I’ll continue to graze on the chips all day and night. There’s just something about that salty crunch that I cannot get enough of even when my stomach aches from way too many.
Well, I guess that’s enough excitement for you for one day. I wouldn’t want to over-stimulate you with any more of my incredibly interesting goings-on. I’ve covered Beavers and Ducks, pushups and potato chips. I guess I’m going to have to live with the fact that Oregon’s mascots are jungle predators, but are peaceful little creatures minding their own business that represent the rain we’re famous for and the beautiful outdoors. But tell you what, you don’t want to mess with them, because they might be packing chainsaws – and their bite is worse than their quack. GO OREGON!!!
I think it is amazing, however, that the two most famous colleges in this state could not come up with more fierce sounding mascots than Ducks and Beavers.
The Oregon State Beavers at least try to make their mascot seem ferocious. On the giant screen on the scoreboards, the cartoon Beaver has a chainsaw. When the other team gets a third down, the Beaver fires up the chainsaw and starts cutting down trees one after the other. He gets a determined look in his eyes.
At least the Beaver can get a little respect because, even though he’s a water dwelling varmint who makes his living gnawing on trees, he’s smart enough to use a piece of equipment to shred his opponents – at least psychologically. Whenever the chainsaw starts, the crowd roars and this, in turn, has a negative effect on the opposing team.
But what about the University of Oregon Duck? What’s he going to do to his adversaries? Quack them into begging for mercy? “Oh please Mr. Duck, please don’t quack at us any more.”
Or perhaps the Duck could slap them around with his webfeet. I’m just not seeing it. A duck does not bring fear and trembling into my heart.
That Duck is nothing to mess with, though. When the team scores, he gets down and does pushups for the number of points scored. He had to do 51 pushups today in the game against Stanford. The crowd counts along to keep him honest. That’s got to be one strong Duck, though he doesn’t go all the way down.
Speaking of going down, I’m taking a PE course and they wanted us to do a physical assessment on the first day. I thought I could do about 30 pushups, but I’ve apparently been doing them wrong because I could only do seven the way the PE teacher wanted them done. She made me go all the way down so that my elbows were at a 90-degree angle. Do you know how hard that is? It’s really, really hard, that’s how hard. Try it if you don’t believe me.
But where was I? Oh yeah, at the game today. We sat down in our seats and were smacked with a waft of BO that hit me like the breath from a garbage-eating dragon. It was really acrid. There was a gentleman sitting upwind of us who was as big as two men. My husband said, “I bet that’s where it’s coming from.” Now this might have been a mean thing to say, and perhaps it wasn’t nice to stereotype, but I think that was precisely where the foul odor was coming from.
“Have you got anything aromatic in your backpack?” I asked. My husband dug around but all he could find was a roll of Life Savers. I rubbed a cherry one just under my nose so I could smell cherry instead of armpit. It worked somewhat.
The day was fun, I got to each a ton of potato chips. I love chips. There can be a table full of exotic foods and I’ll just sit beside the potato chips and gorge on them the whole time. I’ll eat the exotic foods, too, but I’ll continue to graze on the chips all day and night. There’s just something about that salty crunch that I cannot get enough of even when my stomach aches from way too many.
Well, I guess that’s enough excitement for you for one day. I wouldn’t want to over-stimulate you with any more of my incredibly interesting goings-on. I’ve covered Beavers and Ducks, pushups and potato chips. I guess I’m going to have to live with the fact that Oregon’s mascots are jungle predators, but are peaceful little creatures minding their own business that represent the rain we’re famous for and the beautiful outdoors. But tell you what, you don’t want to mess with them, because they might be packing chainsaws – and their bite is worse than their quack. GO OREGON!!!
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