“I’m so embarrassed. I told everyone that Soylent Green is people, but if you read the label closely, it says it’s actually made from “artificial people flavoring.” – Bob Van Voris
In the end, what’s wrong with it? I’m sure cows and pigs wouldn’t mind at all.
Garlic and hot pepper mashed potatoes are really good for about the first 15 minutes.
After about 5 hours they start to get a little old.
Hmm… I know! A couple Pop-Tarts and a big bowl of Cocoa Krispies will take care of it! I’d eat the box of donuts but that would be against my new year’s resolution. I don’t want to be bad after all.
New Year’s Day. Time to reflect back upon the previous year and make resolutions for the year to come. There are, of course, the easy ones – like, I’ll never eat the entire box of donuts by myself again, or I’ll never wax my back hair again. Sickness and pain – both good things to avoid. Then there are the tried and true resolutions – like, I’ll lose this extra weight before summer, or I’ll quit (bad habit) this year!
2002. The year reads the same looking forward as looking back. And, since most New Year’s resolutions are lucky to last to the next day, let alone the next twelve months, the upcoming year may look a lot like the previous year for most folks. Come summer that spare tire around your middle will still be there from eating way too many boxes of Dunkin’ Donuts (thanks be to the magic of Ultra Strength Tums). And, of course, without the desired weight loss, you feel like you have to do at least something for those summer swimsuit days – so enter the back waxing. Rrrrrrriiiiiiiiiiipppp! Ouch!
Of course, upon this brief moment of reflection, I think this year I really will stop with the donuts and lose that weight before summer! Either that, or maybe I’ll just quit the bad habit of making New Year’s resolutions…
Twas the night before Christmas…
The presents are wrapped – well mostly. A few will get covered in paper and ribbons moments before rushing out the door to meet more family. Santa Claus, however, is all finished with his wrapping. He’s tucked presents under the tree and filled the stockings. No cookies and milk this year, but the sink has an extra bowl with the last chocolate-milk remains of Cocoa Krispies visible on the spoon.
A new rocking horse with saddle and mane, and buttons on his ears that make the horse come alive with sound, waits for it’s first rider. There are other devices, buttons at the ready to play sounds and music to delight the ears of a young child. The tree will be as it has for the past several weeks but in a fresh young mind will mean something more. It will, for a day, become the centerpiece of giving and receiving, laughter and smiles. Those big red socks with the white fur trim hanging up actually have something inside of them! The now familar Christmas carols are playing on the stereo. Torn bits of wrapping paper litter the floor – just as fun in some ways as the bright new toys, to the dismay of eager parents. A shiny red bow stuck on the dog’s back provides a momentary burst of laughter at the antics as he tries to remove it.
These are the sugar-plums that dance in my head…
Merry Christmas
Twas the night before the night before Christmas…
Last minute shopping ideas (without all that messy shopping).
10 – Re-gift closet. You know what I’m talking about…
9 – Dust off your knick-knack shelves and find a box. Buy something new for yourself at the post-holiday sales.
8 – Start baking…
7 – “You’ve always admired my sweater…” Important: Bring something else to wear.
6 – Gas station gifts. They’ll be open and it’s not “really” shopping… Air freshener, candy bars, and a tire gauge!
5 – Gift certificates to a Chinese restaurant. They’ll be open.
4 – Ummm… Okay you’re screwed. Hit the mall quick.
I never said it would be a top ten list. Next year, shop earlier!
What if… Captain Kirk had been a farmer?
Zippers are primal and modern at the very same time. On the one hand, your zipper is primitive and reptilian, on the other, mechanical and slick. A zipper is where the Industrial Revolution meets the Cobra Cult, don’t you think? Ahh. Little alligators of ecstasy, that’s what zippers are. Sexy, too. Now your button, a button is slim and persnickety. There’s somethin’ Victorian about a row o’ buttons. But a zipper, why a zipper is the very snake at the gate of Eden, waitin’ to escort a true believer into the Garden.
-Author Unknown
Try as I might I can’t add to this one tonight. 😉
Geez, the comments you get when you complain about people showing Santa’s butt-crack in one article then you kill him off with DECON laced cookies in another article. These must be the same people who tell you not to bring snacks to church or belch in public. The nerve.
So anyway, I’m driving in bumper-to-bumper holiday traffic, 20 minutes late, marveling at the number of cars out shopping, when a thought occurs to me. I’ve always claimed 13 was my lucky number. I’m actually a pretty happy guy with decent luck and enough material goods to keep me busy. As I slam on the brakes to avoid some idiot stopping for no apparent reason, it comes to me, what if I hadn’t picked 13 as my lucky number? Between curses under my breath at the other driver and reinserting the piece of cardboard I had jammed into my radio’s on-switch to keep it depressed and working, I couldn’t imagine anything being any different because of a silly number. But still, as I forced my way into a solid line of grinch-driven traffic to narrowly make my turn for home, I wondered if I should have stuck with 42… or 7… or maybe even 1089, just to be unique. As I scuffed the tires on the curb parallel parking in front of the house, and carried my box of personal items from work inside, I came to the conclusion that my days were all pretty normal, so what could it possibly change for me? Besides, lucky numbers are just a lot of superstitious nonsense anyway, knock on wood.
Twas the night before Christmas, and all through my house
Not a creature was stirring, except for that $%^&* mouse!
I’d set all the traps on the counters with care
In hopes that the critter would meet his end there!
And on the off chance that it wasn’t enough,
I’d purchased some DECON cuz that stuff is tough!
And using the cookies he’d chewed just last night
I baited the traps with this poison delight!
When down in the kitchen there arose such a clatter,
I sprang from the bed (grabbing pants and a sweater),
And I discovered, with trap on his hand,
St. Nick on the floor, passed on from this land.
12 Days (Musings) of Christmas
12 – What the heck is the fascination with Christmas lights? My neighborhood looks like a redneck version of the Vegas strip – if that’s possible! This year, red, white, and blue Christmas lights join the mix! Uncle Sam-ta Claus?
11 – I stood out in the cold and darkness for an hour and a half the day after Thanksgiving waiting for an office supply store to open so I could buy cheap electronics that I don’t even need. I still have to send in the rebates and wait until spring before getting any of the real savings sent back to me. Let’s see… 1.5 hours waiting, .5 hours grabbing stuff, 1 hour checking out, 1 hour traveling, 1 hour for rebates, multiplied by $50/hour for my time is $250 that I’d better be saving. Hmm… Not.
10 – Twenty-four hour holiday music radio stations. All the hits you NEVER want to hear. “You’ve just finished listening to Barry Manilow singing Jingle Bell Rock, and Iron Maiden’s version of Silent Night.”
9 – Special holiday episodes. Santa a serial killer – this week’s The Practice!
8 – Buy now – will ship before Christmas! From where, Alpha Centauri???
7 – Santa Claus bell-ringers. Grr… How much change do they think I carry?
6 – Why do people send Christmas cards showing Santa’s butt-crack? Come on! It’s Santa, for crying out loud. Give it a break. Oh yeah, and stop with the anatomically correct snowmen too. I hang up my Christmas cards and I’ve got Jesus on the cross right next to Viagra Snowman and Construction Worker Santa! Not pretty.
5 – People actually wait and see who sends them Christmas cards before they mail out their cards? Fa la la la la… That’s the spirit! Hope they’ve got room for a lot of coal.
4 – Pop Singers redoing Christmas stand-bys. Give me Bing… Frank… Nat… Johnny… Hell, I’ll even take Neil! It’s a little funny hearing Christmas carols by a Jewish guy, but hey… *anything* is better than “A Boy-Band Christmas!”
3 – Pine needles stuck in the carpeting… You fake-tree owners just don’t experience all the true joys of a natural Christmas. Oooo, are those band-aids in my stocking?!?!
2 – I still think the “people” from Whoville are creepy. The Grinch wasn’t exactly Mr. Personality and might have been a little scary looking but at least he had a cool song. People from Whoville, Smurfs, Munchkins, and Oompa Loompas… Very very creepy.
1 – To all the companies who only pay attention to year-end accounting and give people the boot just before Christmas… You know all that coal you’ve been getting year after year? Well, it’s to help you BURN IN YOU-KNOW-WHERE!
Merry Christmas!
(yeah, even you corporate jerks)
WANTED – Honorable employer.
Oh yeah, and while I’m at it, how about a goose that lays golden eggs?
Heck, I’m realistic. Just give me the bird.
The only thing I was fit for was to be a writer, and this notion rested solely on my suspicion that I would never be fit for real work, and that writing didn’t require any.
– Russell Baker
Of course, I’m wimping out by using quotes… 😉
If you have both feet planted on level ground, then the university has failed you.
– Robert F. Goheen
The college industry is a tool for society to place all the square pegs in the square holes and all the round pegs in the round holes. Heaven forbid you’re not a square or round peg. First they’ll try and put you on the lathe and shave you into a normal peg. Second they’ll try and at least take off the more radical edges so you at least fit, no matter how uncomfortably, into a square or round hole. Lastly, they use you as an example of a bad peg and throw you on the scrap heap.
If you let them.
When life gives you lemons, make lemonade.
It also doesn’t hurt to pretend that the lemon you’re squeezing the life’s juices out of is the head of your mortal enemy.
Holiday Redneck Police, or More about My Pumpkin-Keeping-Brother
Me: Sir, we’ve had reports of December Halloween-Pumpkin-Keeping at this address.
Brother Keith: Scott, what are you talking about? Sir? You already wrote about that stupid pumpkin yesterday.
Me: Just doing my job.
BK: A little sleep would do you wonders. Some of us actually do read the timestamps on those web log entries. Plus, I’ve seen the hard cider bottles on your desk!
Me: You can answer the questions here, or down at the station. Your choice, sir. Now, about the pumpkin…
BK: Pumpkin is in the can… on the curb… should be in the landfill by mid morning. Gone. Forever.
Me: Gone?
BK: Yeah, at least I won’t have a pumpkin and a Christmas tree on the curb. That is reserved only for the true professionals.
Me: Very funny. This is serious business.
BK: It’s a pumpkin.
Me: In December. Very very wrong.
BK: I should have draped Christmas lights over the pumpkin…
Me: Sir, stop.
BK: Then I could have painted it and hid it on easter!
Me: That’s enough!
BK: Then, on July 4th… KABOOM!
Me: I’m going to have to give you a ticket now, sir.
BK: C’mon! You were just short on material for your web log tonight! We’re brothers!
Me: Here’s your ticket, Bro.
BK: Nothing is sacred methinks.
Me: I’ll be checking back to see about those Christmas lights this January…
So I go over to my brother’s house. I can see his Christmas tree lights through the window as I pull up. I get out of the car and as I walk up to the porch, with the “Bring on the Blizzard” happy snowman sign, there it was. I was totally shocked. My own brother?! It was undeniable. The proof was sitting there, right in front of me on the top step, an eerie Christmas-light glow reflecting off the slick orange surface. My kin. My blood. A Halloween-Pumpkin-Keeper.
Surely, I thought, there must be some explanation. This is where he had installed his hidden home video surveillence camera? Santa’s reindeers secretly like to eat rotted two-month-old pumpkin? No, what was I doing. You can’t cover up the problem. He didn’t even try – not even a Santa hat thrown casually on top of it. Nothing.
I just prayed that once I got inside I wouldn’t find the tree decked out in ghosts and goblins. Aside from the obvious Halloween candy dumped into a festive Baby Jesus bowl, everything else was okay.
Still, it’s a shame I can never talk to him again.
You can’t be a Real Country unless you have a BEER and an airline. It helps if you have some kind of a football team, or some nuclear weapons, but at the very least you need a BEER. – Frank Zappa
While everyone else in the neighborhood is out hanging Christmas lights I’m doing yardwork. They’re all hoping for snow and I’m praying for a few more days of sunshine to dry out the lawn so I can mow one more time. Now mind you, I’m not the guy down the street with jack-o-lanterns wilting on his porch or those dreadful pumpkin garbage bags sitting in the front lawn – but I was starting to feel like that was all I was missing. Nothing shatters the picture-perfect holiday-looking house like two-foot tendrils of uncut bushes poking out from under a picturesque blanket of snow. Or a freshly shoveled walk with all the half-rotted frozen leaves upturned by the snow shovel now sitting on top of the otherwise white Christmas-postcard landscape. Not this year! December 3rd in normally frozen Indiana, God willing, the noise polluting growl of a lawn-mower will ring out in my neighborhood once more. While other mowers sit snugly in their winter garage-beds, dreams of spring dandelions floating in their cylinders, my lawn-boy will be chewing into six-inch semi-wet bent-over leaf-ridden blades of grass. Yeah, baby! Those who cut last have the neatest trimmed yards when the snow melts next spring. Pumpkin-dude, eat your heart out!
A thousand years from now some archaeologist digging through countless layers of what today is one of our landfills is going to wonder what the heck that red, white, and blue layer was all about…
Thanksgiving – license to eat so much food you feel miserable the rest of the day.
Of course, while sitting at the table staring at the remains of three helpings of everything somebody in the background asks, “Anyone for pie?”
Oh my gawd! Are they insane? Pie?!? After all of that food?
Of course. Besides, dessert goes into a different stomach anyway.
