RELIGIOUS HOLIDAYS

RELIGIOUS HOLIDAYS

I have finally finished my Easter candy. At least I think I have; my wife hid all of my chocolate eggs so that I could hunt for them. Which I found mean and vindictive. Can you imagine if the Red Cross went into a relief area and hid the food JUST FOR FUN? I took my Winchester 94 with me. That way, if I failed to find any eggs I could just shoot at the ground and hope to find oil, like Jed Clampett. Wife sat there smugly as I struggled to find food. I said hey I don’t see you going down to the reservoir and hiding the swan’s eggs. Try that on for size.

I am still finding a chocolate egg here and there- there were several in my car which I did not discover until the weather returned from its high of 91 degrees.

As a kid we used to color our hard-boiled eggs the night before Easter with Paas Easter Egg Dye. You dissolve the different color dyes in bowls of water. After holding the egg patiently in the mixture for about an hour-and-a-half, the white egg would magically re-appear the vibrant color of ecru. You could hardly recognize it. They were hardly Faberge masterpieces, but they kept us out of trouble for however long an hour-and-a-half times one dozen is.

My mother used to hide the eggs that night so we could find them the next day. Unfortunately, we all well knew that the hours between Easter Eve and Easter Morning were more than adequate for her to completely forget where she hid them. I fantasize that the people who eventually bought our house every once in awhile scratch their head and go, “There it is again- what the hell is that smell?” Sometimes someone in North Dakota will find what they insist is a petrified dinosaur egg, but us six kids know better.

Then we would get hauled off to the Country Club (I love saying that, but I’m sure you know that if you call yourself a “Country Club,” it only means that you are hoping with desperation that you could be that which you are not), where they had a lovely Easter day planned, with an Easter egg hunt and a magician. I remember hating it, which proves I was cool even back then. The other kids were way faster and smarter at finding the plastic eggs with the prizes in them. Which proves I was unathletic, even back then. The magician did the same lame tricks every time, including the old “milk-in-the-newspaper-cone” trick.

Which I just had to try at home. Not only would there be a huge puddle of milk on the floor, but Dad would have no idea what happened in the world that day. Prior to getting yelled at and possibly misdemeanor assaulted, I would say, “Well, there’s no use crying over THAT is there?” and run like hell.

Easter is the most cannibalistic-seeming holiday. The torturous glee with which you slowly devour a whole animal, without skinning it or cooking it, starting with its ears. With no ability to hear, and sometimes with its tail suddenly consumed, hence its balance compromised, it still wears an fatuous and gruesome smile. I finally get to the flesh-eater’s prize, the beautiful blue eyes. I chew them slowly and savor them. Should the chocolate bunny lay chocolate eggs, I will swallow their unborn children whole.

I start to see things from Hannibal Lechter’s side. Which reminds me: every time I see a baby with one of those sucker things in its mouth I think of Hannibal Lechter. Is that baby a dangerous criminal? A psychotic killer? It is laughing at inappropriate times, a clear sign. It has a dazed, drooly look. Could it jump across that high chair, club me, remove my skin and eat me? It does not look particularly agile, but neither do NFL offensive linemen. Then the sucker thing falls out of its mouth and I feel stupid for even thinking it. But I steer well clear of it anyway.

I never pay much attention to the religious side of it; that people believe in such things seems vaguely embarrassing to me. But I would NEVER say so out loud. If there really is a Judgement Day I picture everyone sitting around a big table holding up signs with “7.5” or “6.0” on them. It will be a lot like the Easter Egg hunt, where I never made such a great showing.


Incidentally, the name “Easter” is possibly derived from “Eostre,” a month of the Germanic calendar akin to April, in which feasts were held. The holiday corresponds with the Jewish holiday of Passover, and the gambling holiday of Passover/under. The New Testament of the Bible teaches that Easter follows the Last Supper and the Crucifixion. And if you look closely at da Vinci’s The Last Supper, you can plainly see that Judas is reaching for a chocolate Easter bunny.

Provided by website-hit-counters.com site.

NATIONAL RESPONSIBILITY

NATIONAL RESPONSIBILITY

Have you sent your Census Form back yet? I have not. But Person Number 1 has. After 30 some odd years (some would argue most odd) of signing on the dotted line below my dotted line, my wife has taken it upon herself to become “Person Number 1,” as directed by our Census form. I found this amazing! Of all the people in America to receive the survey, she was the FIRST!

So Person Number 1 was just about to start answering the questions, but then Person Number 1 had to clean up a cat number 2.

The questions seem fairly simple. They ask your name, which she got right. But that is not until question #5. There are other more important matters. First it asks, “How many people are living or staying at this house, apartment or mobile home?” Which implies that some of the people staying at your house might not necessarily be alive. This is potentially a trick question which you should answer carefully, and if need be, consult a deceased lawyer.

Question 2: “Are there any additional people staying here that you did not include in Question 1?” If you recently put an addition on your home, this is where they probably are living, so check that out. Or it might mean people who are good at math.

Then it asks: Are You Hot? If so, what is your telephone number???

It asks your sex, Male or Female. It instructs you to “Mark ONE box,” so it won’t do to hedge your bets.

You have to list your age. The form says it is okay to report a baby as age 0, but a baby age 0 seems like it may have been ill-conceived.

In addition to asking your race (I put the 5K), it separately asks whether you are of Hispanic, Latino or Spanish origin. If so, what is your batting average? I think they may be starting a softball team at the census bureau.

Question number 10: “Does Person 1 sometimes live or stay somewhere else?” By the way if you live in a trailer, you may be at home and also somewhere else, depending on where you are parked. The choices are: 1.) In college housing; 2.) In the military; 3.) At a second residence; 4.) For child custody; 5). In jail or prison; 6.) In a nursing home; 7.) For another reason, which I take to mean: Who-knows-where with Tiger Woods.

Speaking of Tiger, I was recently in the office of a noted sexual psychiatrist, who evaluated him. The doctor sat him down and said, “Mr. Woods, I will first ask you two important questions to make an analysis of your condition and determine whether you are a sex addict. First, are you a guy?” Tiger answered yes. The doctor said, “Okay, so you are a sex addict. Now the next question: do you know how to play whist? We have another 50 minutes to kill till ten minutes of two.”

The doctor then proceeded to win 17 hands of whist in a row, but then Tiger challenged him to arm wrestle, whereupon he won and bruised a bone in the doctor’s hand.

Tiger then showed me a text message he recently sent to a “links minx:”
“I C U from 16th T. U R a Q T! I like UR B hind. U have a nice boo T. luv TGRRR”

I can’t really picture Tiger as a ladies man since he seems so polite- the very name “Tiger” should be reserved for football players or boxers, not golfers. These guys are dressing in knickers and visors- you make your own judgement, and please mark only ONE box.

Question number 11 asks: “Didn’t I just see you at the hardware store?”

There are many scam questionnaires going around, so pay attention to the questions if they do not match the ones I have listed above. Does it ask for your Social Security number? Does it ask, “What is your cat’s name?” That plus the current year will get you into just about any account. Does it ask, “Where do you keep your spare key?” All red flags.

So fill out the census and be counted. And long live the NEW Person Number 1. She will enjoy her newfound status, higher self-esteem, and I’m guessing a jury duty notice sometime very soon.


Incidentally, if you do not send back your form, a government Census agent comes to you to harass, cajole and harangue you, not necessarily in that order. And your tax dollars are paying for it. The first thing they ask you is won’t you please come to your census. Then they push right in and check what’s in the fridge. If they don’t leave, you may have to list them in Question number two. Chances are they will eventually go; it’s off to the next field trip, where apparently NO ONE at Sin City Gentlemen’s Club has answered the census.

Provided by website-hit-counters.com site.

SPORTS

SPORTS

I have not had a chance to write (lucky you) (and yes I understand you are not the plural you) because I’ve been working hard on the NCAA Tournament. My job is to assemble a whole bunch of information regarding how the network is broadcast into a zillion different regions, and make sure that the people who actually make the switches know what the heck they are doing.

You can say what you want about the NCAA Tournament, mostly because it is your first amendment right. By the way, why is the right to free speech an amendment? How did they forget to put that into the Constitution in the first place? Remember that War for Independence we just fought so that we could speak freely? Didn’t anyone proofread the thing? “Dude we left some stuff out- it might be pretty important…”

Incidentally I have a great idea to reduce the deficit: you know the Bill of Rights? Go ahead and submit a bill. Charge people for the rights they actually use. For instance, I need free speech so I can annoy people. But I don’t need to bear arms. I have arms, but I don’t need to bear them. Charge people extra for brandishing arms, and even more if they menace. I don’t need free religion- I am not religious. I don’t need to do anything unto others- I can’t remember if that is the Bill of Rights or the Ten Commandments? I always get those and Benjamin Franklin confused. “A Penny Saved is a Penny Earned-“ was that Jesus or Ben Franklin? I heard Jesus was kind of a cheapskate.

Anyway, when the NCAA tournament rolls around everyone has to “pick their brackets.” Don’t worry that you know ABSOLUTELY nothing about the teams, just pick them. The early rounds of your bracket are awash with red ink. If you got most of them right that means you are an idiot savant, like a horse who can paint with his tail, and it comes out looking better than some stuff you have seen at the MOMA, or when your cat walks across the piano, and it sounds a little like Liszt. Or when George Clooney is in a movie and for some odd reason it isn’t that bad.

Obama picked some ridiculous school for an upset and was crowing about it for two days. My mother LOVED the NCAA Tournament, because she loved to root for the underdog.
“I love Michigan- they are cute! A little school like that against a big powerhouse and they WON!”
“Mom, Michigan was favored by 25 points- their stadium fits 100,000 people.”

This year these dopey mid-major schools have been beating up on the big guns, and the execs at CBS are getting nervous. A final featuring Murray State versus St. Marys (Cal) was a distinct and distasteful possibility for far too long. Any school that has to list what state it’s from in parentheses because there is another BETTER school somewhere else with the same name does NOT belong this deep in the tournament.

They are thinking of expanding the tournament to 96 teams. This is not good. I went to Syracuse, which is a fine learning institution with a damned good basketball team. I don’t want to see some bogus little college come along and knock my ass out in the second round.

It would actually be 97 teams, because they have that play-in game. Can someone please explain why that play-in game is in my life? Didn’t they play the whole season so that they could either be selected or not selected by the tournament committee like everyone else? The winner (loser, because the winner wins an embarrassing smack-down in the first round by the number one seed of the tournament) this year was Arkansas-Pine Bluff. Does a team with the word “bluff” in it sound like it’s going very far? This year they skipped the game and Duke just took them into a back alley and shot them- it was more humane.

Some dopey schools in the past: I.U.P.U.I. I’m not sure what it stands for but it will keep you from getting pregnant I think. Also: Austin Peay (pronounced Austin Pee), which got a lot of chuckles from dads and eye-rolls from moms with kids named Austin.

And the lower the seed, the weirder the school nickname is. Cornell is known as the Big Red. The Big Red WHAT? I think I know the answer, but I am too much of a lady to say. Speaking of ladies, that’s another thing. After Title IX passed, all the major schools had to fund female basketball programs, but they didn’t give any thought to what they would call them. So they just put the word “lady” in front of the existing nickname. The “Lady Trojans” of USC is a perfect example of inappropriate. Now the nickname for Brigham Young University is the “Cougars,” so I’m not sure what to make of that.


Incidentally, the lowest seed to become the national champion was Villanova in 1985. They did qualify as a “Cinderella” team, because they arrived at the tournament in a large pumpkin, and believe me the inside of it was the pits.

Provided by website-hit-counters.com site.

WINTER OLYMPICS

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

VACATION DESTINATIONS II

VACATION DESTINATIONS II

We finally went to Disney World, and I started to write about it, and wasted my whole blog on ONE stupid ride. After “Mission: Hurl” we literally took a slow boat to China. Across a really tiny Pacific Ocean lies an entire world out there. If you’ve always wanted to see the continents, but don’t have the money to travel to Vegas, this is the place for you.

Japan and China are dangerously close to one another. I heard stories of Japan toilet-papering the pagoda, and China short-sheeting the kimonos. We saw three Japanese girls performing a very entertaining taiko drum routine. Then two Chinese girls came over and said, “ 汉字 / 漢字,” which means “shut up with that racket,” to which the Japanese replied “F you and the sampan you rode in on.”

Canada has a neat movie starring Martin Short. It’s very funny, and the basic theme is that Canada is not just a bunch of snow. It is also a country brimming with cold temperatures and some freezing rain. Also it has half of Niagra Falls. We then cruised by the German pavilion, where you can get a Nazi officer’s hat with mouse ears on it. At the Moroccan village, we bought a very young girl whom we plan to use as a slave, if we can teach her how to mow the lawn. At the French ville they made fun of us for not being able to speak English very well.

They have an American pavilion; someone must have seen all the weird buildings around and forgot that we already ARE in America. They have a movie that celebrates the history of our country in grand panoramic film, mixed with surround sound and of course the animatronics. There is an animatronic for everything, and after a while you start to question your own sanity. “That is an animatronic squirrel!” “No it’s not, but it has animatronic nuts!” I went to the bathroom to escape the insanity briefly, and it seemed to me that even some of my body parts had a life of their own.

While we were waiting for the show to start, this spooky glee-club looking octet of men & women in full period dress starts singing songs in perfect harmony. Not only is there not one stray note in the bunch, but they are smiling fatuously in unison. This is typical Disney at its finest- everything is happy there, but not normal-happy: Stepford Wives-happy. At the end of the trip I was so smiled-out I just wanted to run over a cat or something.

Anyway “The American Adventure” movie was grandly stirring, and I managed not to cry until they showed a picture of George W. Bush, who always makes me weep for the future of humanity for some reason.

Back across the pond, as we say, was Ellen’s Energy Adventure (everything in Disney is either an Adventure or a Journey). You sit in a seat in the theater, and the rows of seats start to move around, going back into time. Animatronic dinosaurs try to spit on you, and there is even an animatronic Ellen DeGeneres, who, if I had control over the robotics, I would make a much better dancer.

The Seas with Nemo & Friends was very cute- you ride around in a clamshell through a series of real fish tanks, with holograms of Nemo and his pals superimposed into the tanks. It is a lot like a snorkeling trip in the Caribbean, only not as well-behaved.

We tried out “Test Track,” which simulates the experience of a test car driver doing a series of quality control exercises, such as heat and cold response, traveling over hazardous road surfaces, blind curves and speed. It’s similar to taking a cab ride in Manhattan. They don’t call them crash test dummies for nothing.

We went to dinner at the Coral Reef Restaurant, a huge, beautiful faux-reef tank surrounded by tables. We were sitting right next to the tank itself, and all of a sudden a group of SCUBA divers swam by right in front of us. At first I thought they might be lost, and there was a large shark in the tank, which I pointed out to them. But one of them pointed at my dinner and made the international symbol for “I ordered that once and it wasn’t that great.” I asked the waiter if they could grab something fresh out of there.

Back at the hotel, we noticed these two Japanese girls. Since Japanese tourists dress so weird, it’s really hard to tell them from the Disney characters that over-populate the parks. They usually have either pink hair or a really long visor, and wear a lot of colorful clothes. A dull-witted-looking American guy was trying to make some time with them. Although women love a guy who can make them laugh, if they laugh while pointing at you it’s generally not a good sign. I’m pretty sure I now know the Japanese word for “beer belly.”


Incidentally, Walt Disney had planned for EPCOT to be the model for an integrated community. Laid out in a circle, the small city would consist of businesses in the center, schools and parks in the middle, surrounded by residences for 20,000 people and connected by monorails and people movers. Unfortunately, Walt Disney died before the EPCOT property started development, and the Disney Corporation wanted no part of it.

Provided by website-hit-counters.com site.

VACATION DESTINATIONS I

VACATION DESTINATIONS I

We finally went to Disney World- we had been scared off all these years because of the crowds and the possible bombardment of Americana. The crowds have been managed a little better over the years with the adoption of “Fast Pass,” which allows you to in essence book a time to return for the ride, so you don’t feel foolish waiting in line two hours for an 8-minute ride. It’s a great thing, and I started thinking that they could “Fast Pass” every facet of your life and things would go smoother. I asked my wife- why not “Fast Pass” the restaurants? She said it’s called “reservations,” and we have one for 5 minutes before the park closes, so shut up and get in this line. We started at EPCOT Center, which Walt Disney named himself and means: Experimental Private Coordinated Outhouse Transmutation. I actually forget exactly what it stands for but trust me it’s something like that.

Even on a low-attendance day the crowds are large. If you are not careful you can get caught in a crowd riptide that propels you onto the nearest ride, possibly against your wishes. We were ushered onto one ride that looked like it seated three people, so we climbed aboard with another girl, who had an gi-normous ass. Each of us stood up twice and sat down once, like a game of whack-a-mole, hoping that we could find the right combination of asses to fit into the seat, but it was not to be, so we waited for the next car. The ride was a strict two-seater, and the girl and her ass counted as two.

Next we went to “Mission: Space,” which I hereby refer to as “Mission:Hurl.” It offered a “wuss-friendly” option- you could join the “Green Team” on a very important simulated space mission where you might possibly save the world. Imagine if you will, a pilot, navigator, commander and engineer, all as afraid of heights and motion as you are. We took our places inside the capsule along with two members of another family. Our pilot was a three year-old baby, so we figured we were on the right flight.

The rocket takes off at a zillion G-forces or whatever and I am just trying to keep it together, vomit-wise. I had to look away to avoid barfing on the $20 million controls developed by Hewlett Packard. The pilot-baby was laughing idiotically all through this serious situation. So I figure I'll do what I usually do when I’m driving and open the window, but in space for some reason that's a big no-no. So I try to count license plates, and that of course is another big zero.

Although I heard in the news over the fall that scientists sent a thing the size of an SUV crashing into the moon to see if water would come out of it. By it I assume they meant the moon, since there probably already IS water in the SUV's radiator. It would be just my luck driving along on 684, following the SUV, not paying any attention, and all of a sudden the SUV starts taking off for the moon, and there I am in the middle of a sneezing fit, or trying to get the Yankee score or something, and I end up right behind it crashing into the moon to see if there's any water.

Meanwhile the baby fires the retro-rockets at the wrong time and sends us hurtling into a meteor storm, which sends the simulator into a sickness-inducing frenzy and narrowly misses an asteroid. I yell, "You stupid Baby- what the hell did you do that for! Are you trying to get us all killed?" And the father goes, "Don't call my baby stupid, you greenish-tinted lummox!" I later apologized to the dad, but said in all fairness the baby might be slightly retarded and that he should keep an eye on things.

So we go back out into the sub-freezing temperature of Florida. Seriously, whoever had the dumb idea of moving south for the warm weather is living in a magic kingdom. My sister in Virginia got 2 feet of snow this weekend, while we got ZERO inches. If I have to go to Virginia next weekend to find snow on our ski trip I will be pissed. All the oranges in Florida froze a month ago so orange juice supplies are down, although all the frozen concentrate weathered the chill just fine. I thought I could see a slow-moving glacier coming our way from over near Splash Mountain. I thought we should get the hell out of there, because I didn't want to be captured inside a glacier and discovered thousands of years from now with a sickly look on my face from being on the GREEN team.

There were a lot of exhibits called Imagineerovations, or Engimagineerances, or Edumatioventions, stuff like that. We went into one, and spent about half an hour working a robotic ball-peen hammer trying to break a TV set, which never broke. A stupid premise had I thought about it in advance- why not just release a cat into the area, who will push it off the table the old fashioned way?

Anyway, I have wasted my whole blog on ONE ride, so I will have to finish the Disney trip later…


Incidentally, and this is not apropos of the whole Disney trip, but I thought I should mention my favorite lyric today on Jonathan Schwartz' Sinatra Saturday. Sinatra does this swinging version of My Fair Lady's "Get Me to the Church on Time." At the end he sings, "Ding-dong, ding-dong, ding-dong, ding-dong, ding-dong, ding-dong, ding-dong.... Goddamn bells."

Provided by website-hit-counters.com site.

ANIMAL HUSBANDRY

ANIMAL HUSBANDRY

My friend Chris is an angler. He has acute angle for just about everything, since he used to be in sales. He and his girlfriend Caryn angle sometimes from a rowboat on a lake in upstate New York. Recently instead of a fish they angled a snail. This in itself is interesting, because snails are not very fast, and they are usually attached to a rock. A snail cannot go and chase your line with its bait on it. You pretty much have to catch a snail on its own terms, as he sits there on the rock. Which leads me to believe that Chris catches mostly rocks when he goes fishing.

I teased him and asked if he used a special line to catch the snail and he said, yes: “Do you come here often??”

So they get the snail home and foolishly put it in a tank with water. If it was me I would have done what I always did when I was a kid: put it in a shoebox with some grass and lettuce, and poke a couple holes in the top. Three hours later you have a shoebox with some grass, lettuce and a dead snail. But NO. It turns out snails are asexual, which means they dress well, get manicures and pedicures, spend a lot of time grooming fine lines into their facial hair, and vehemently refuse to discuss their sexual orientation. Unless I’m thinking of metrosexuals?

A snail doesn’t need a partner to have sex. It needs only a warm, comfortable environment and internet access. It saunters along the ground by the wall of the tank, in which it can see its own reflection, and goes, “Damn! I gotta hit dat.”

With my luck I would walk in on the snail having sex with itself, and we’d both be embarrassed, and I would have to explain that it’s perfectly normal, perfectly natural, all snails do it, blah, blah, blah. I dread having that talk.

So six days later there were 17 snails in the tank. They are smart enough to keep a quorum with an odd number so they can break any voting ties, unlike the New York legislature.

Two days after that, Chris asked me what he was going to do with 21 snails? Well, you could make a deal with a French restaurant. French people have a way of selling you for 37 dollars a plate of something you would normally pay $150 to have an exterminator get rid of. Come to think of it I wish he would go fishing in our pantry because I think we have a mouse.

Or he could sell them to a pet store. Someone told me that they sell snails there, but I don’t know if the snail is the pet or something you feed to another pet. I’m afraid to ask, because they know me at the pet store as someone who says weird things. I once burst into the pet store and yelled, “I want a TURTLE- and make it SNAPPY!”

Or he can use them to clean his car windshield. After 10 or 12 snails play touch football on your window, you can bet there will be not one speck of algae on it, although you might not be able to see through the dried slime.

Snails come with problems. Yes, they own their own homes, but like so many these days, they are underwater. And trying to run away from home presents a logistical nightmare.

Snails leave a trail. So you can ask, who took the last Dove Bar? And the snail will turn red and go, Not me, brother. But of course the oozy evidence leads right to the freezer….

Plus they move incredibly slowly. If you get into a checkout line at Home Depot that is not moving no way, no how, there is a snail working the register, guaranteed. And then it becomes tempting to finally learn how to use that Self-Checkout island where two people who could have been running registers tell you how to use it.

On the plus side they multiply really fast- I started taking one with me to the restaurant to calculate the tip. I look like a friggin’ genius now.


Incidentally, the snail’s antennae are not used for bringing in ESPN, as previously thought. The two large antennae are it’s eye stalks (it doesn’t see very well, even though its eyes get there a few minutes earlier than the rest of it), and the smaller ones are for feeling and smell. So if you punch a snail in the big antenna it will only be able to see half of you leave, but if you punch it in the small antenna, you will hurt its feelings.

Provided by website-hit-counters.com site.