RICKSTER IS THE COLUMNIST FOR THE WEEKLY PUBLICATION, "THE SOMERS RECORD"

Search The World... In Briefs!

Friday, January 30, 2015

2014: THE YEAR IN BRIEFS

Here are the important stories of this year. They are so stupid that I could not possibly have made them up.

*In February, the Girl Scouts chapter of Colorado told their members that they cannot sell cookies outside of marijuana dispensaries. This may seem to go against everything America stands for, but It turns out to be simply a safety issue. Apparently, shoppers at the pot shop, after eating all the Girl Scout cookies, ate some of the Brownies, who were only there to help their big sisters. On the plus side, Girl Scouts ARE allowed to sell weed outside of cookie stores.
(http://news.yahoo.com/girl-scouts-cookies-colorado-pot-shops-134107732.html)

*This year, the NFL welcomed its first outwardly gay football player, Michael Sam. Or vice-versa. What exactly does "outwardly gay" mean? Don't answer that. Remember what a surprise it was when Ellen Degereres came out as gay? I imagine this particular NFL announcement to be a little bit like that. There are guys in the locker room that know all of the words to the songs from "Frozen," and guys that don't know that many. There are guys that remember what Cher looked like in that video straddling a 406mm cannon, and guys that just remember the 406mm cannon. Although I'm not sure which guys are the straight ones and which guys are gay.
(http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/05/10/michael-sam-drafted-rams_n_5298968.html)

*In March, the Supreme Court announced that it had declined to hear the "I {heart} Boobies" case. School officials in Easton, Pennsylvania had suspended two girls for wearing bracelets that support breast cancer awareness with the slogan "I (the heart symbol) Boobies." The girls had challenged the decision based on the right to free speech, even though they hadn't said much. Ironically, since the girls were in the seventh and eighth grades, they probably hadn't had enough experience with boobies to determine how they really felt about them. The students were also prohibited from attending the school's winter ball, prompting them to wear a bracelet on the other arm that said, "I {heart} Balls."
(http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/03/10/us-usa-court-freespeech-idUSBREA290SA20140310)

*In March, Denver, Colorado introduced the O.penVAPE Cannabis Job Fair, for prospective employees seeking a career in the burgeoning recreational marijuana industry. I was able to ask an attendee at the event what kind of job he was seeking at the fair, and he replied, "What fair?" He then fell over and landed in a chair in front of an HR representative, who looked over his resume and asked him, "I notice you didn't smoke marijuana at all at your last job, and had a perfect attendance record. Can you explain that please?" He was later hired against his will as part of a joint venture.
(http://denver.cbslocal.com/2014/03/14/job-seekers-swarm-marijuana-job-fair-as-colorados-green-rush-continues/)

*In March, a small Japanese airline encountered a bit of bad publicity after announcing that it will require flight attendants to wear very short mini-skirts. There was no word whether the uniforms are only required for female stewardesses, but no male employees have complained. The airline, in its defense, stated that in fact the garments were not really short mini-skirts, but really long micro-skirts. The incident has caused quite a flap, which the stewardesses used to cover up their asses.
(https://uk.finance.yahoo.com/news/mini-skirt-turbulence-japan-budget-103216376.html)

*In May, two boys in upstate New York were injured when a "bouncy house" went airborne. The bouncy house started out in South Glens Falls, and presumably ended up in North Glens Falls. The scene was eerily similar to one depicted in "The Wizard of Oz," and may, in fact, have been a copyright infringement. New regulations for properly tethering these attractions are being considered to avoid mishaps in the future. Having ties to the community is what makes a bouncy house a bouncy home.
(http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation-now/2014/05/14/bounce-house-boys-injured/9072955/)

*In July, the Caribbean Coral Reef Institute revealed that it had named a new species of water mite after Jennifer Lopez. The insect has a small thorax and a very large ass, and when captured in a paper bag, was apparently unable to act its way out of it. The singer, known for such works as, "I Luh Ya Papi," was unavailable for comment, but it was noted that the water mite spoke better English. A giddy, unnamed scientist exclaimed, "Thinking of JLo always gives me an organism!"
(http://ibnlive.in.com/news/meet-jlo-the-bug-a-group-of-scientists-have-honored-jennifer-lopez-by-naming-a-species-of-water-mite-after-her/486478-79.html)

*In August, ecologists at LSU reported a "dead zone" in the Gulf of Mexico the size of Connecticut. A dead zone is a man-made condition that causes water to become so algae-infested that it cannot produce enough oxygen to sustain life. Even so, it is believed to have more to do in it than Connecticut. When the dead zone moves closer to the Florida panhandle, officials will fry it up and serve it at participating Chipotles. A similar dead zone in the Midwest the size of Wyoming was later discovered to be Wyoming.
(http://news.yahoo.com/dead-zone-gulf-mexico-size-connecticut-181202438.html)

*In August, according to reports, one of Nicki Minaj's dancers was bitten by a snake during the filming of a music video. Apparently both were performing a tap dancing routine. The snake says that Nicki Minaj's dancer started the altercation and bit the snake first. Immediately several people sprang into action and attempted to suck poison out of various places on Nicki Minaj's body, even though it was not a poisonous snake and Nicki Minaj was not involved in any way. Later the ASPCA admitted that Nicki Minaj had an oversized asp.
(http://www.nydailynews.com/entertainment/music/nicki-minaj-dancer-bitten-snake-rehearsal-anaconda-article-1.1914070)

Like you, I am looking forward to a productive 2015. Now get out there and do something idiotic!

Monday, January 12, 2015

HOW WERE YOUR HOLIDAYS?

These days the Holiday Season seems to stretch from mid-October until Martin Luther King's Birthday. Should I get a gift for that? What do you get for a dead guy who has been to the Promised Land? Well if I was supposed to get him a gift he should have signed up for our Secret Santa at work.

By the way, our Secret Santa at work has devolved into a thinly veiled bitching session about management's idiosyncrasies. Everybody knows I hate bananas, so every year I get some frigging banana-related gift so that they can all snicker and get even with me without getting fired. This year they even organized the whole thing through a website that protected everyone's anonymity. I wish that damned Eric Snowden would come back and hack into the Secret Santa site; I bet there is a treasure trove of information in there.

Anyway, once we made it through Halloween, where I spent a week making a cow costume to go with some lame joke I can't even remember, it was time to think about Thanksgiving. Already dudes dressed as Santa Claus were showing up on car dealership commercials, where the car is wrapped in a big bow as if I am supposed to pick up a few on the way home to put under the tree. After all the drinking and carrying on at holiday parties this year, a new car and a tree are two things that do not go together.

We navigated our way through Black Friday, Small Business Saturday, Financially Strapped Sunday, Moneyless Monday, Tapped-Out Tuesday, Wallet- Emptying Wednesday, Thieving-Bastard Thursday and Flat Broke Friday. Since then Paypal and I are not really pals anymore, and in fact we have barely said a word to each other.

We started to see all these ugly inflatable Christmas decorations on peoples' lawns. I told my wife somebody must have died of a brain embolism blowing all this shit up, and she said they use an electric blower for that. I said that sounds like a great invention. There was a blow-up creche with an inflatable Christ-child. I said, Jesus I'd hate to be the prick that pops Jesus by mistake.

There was a giant Saint Bernard and an air-filled Santa getting out of a helicopter. Is that how he rolls these days? Is Santa on LinkedIn? Is he on Facebook to find out if I've been bad or good? Does posting true things that the Republicans said make me bad or good? I had no idea what to expect present- wise.

Christmas Eve we went next door for a celebration with the neighbors' family, where we have been going so long that everyone's little kids think we are related to them. I could be an uncle once removed if they hadn't removed me so many more times than that.... Those kids probably expect gifts from us, and if so I have a closet-full of banana-related stuff for them.

It was so foggy on Christmas Eve I couldn't imagine trying to get around without a red-nosed reindeer with a light bulb for a nose to guide me. If the reindeer came from next door, by the way, I know how it got the red nose. At the DWI check-point, the officer tries to get to the truth:

"You there, with the red nose- how much you have to drink tonight?"
"Like, two beers."
"Where you coming from?"
"The North Pole."
"Where is that?"
"It's North of here."
"What's all that stuff in the back?"
"Those are presents- we have elves that make them in a sweatshop up there."
"This is an iphone- elves made an iphone?"
"They are magic elves, and that fat guy in the back seat is in charge of the whole thing."
"You know your story sounds ridiculous."

Christmas Day we dove into our presents. I admit that I am a horrible gift- giver. I basically project my wants and needs onto the recipient or give something that will indirectly benefit me. I don't do this on purpose, and I always hope that since I got you something useful to me, I will be more fun to be around and that will make up for the fact that I didn't get something useful to you.

Then we had a fantastic Christmas dinner at the Traveler's Rest, where for some reason they had the Christmas carols blaring so loudly you could hardly hear yourself think. If you've never heard "Silent Night" at 142 decibels, it's a paradox. By the way when they finally turned the music down I still couldn't hear myself think, so I'm looking into that.

After dinner we went to a local church, where they have a huge dinner for the homeless. Every year we volunteer on the cleanup crew. We have led such a relatively carefree life that we like to give something back to the community. And now that we've been doing it for four or five years now, I think we've kind of tipped the scales back in our favor, and not for nothing but I think it's time for the community to give something back to US. Just in case anyone from the community is reading this, I wear a size 11 shoe, and a 42 long in everything else. If it's a check I usually take large.



Incidentally, the song "Silent Night" was first performed on Christmas Eve of 1818 in Oberndorf, an Austrian village. The words were written by a priest named Josef Mohr. He took them to an organist named Franz Gruber, from a nearby town, and asked him to compose the melody, which he did. Mohr had attempted to write the accompaniment himself, but it came out sounding like "Smoke On the Water."