Category: Uncategorized

It’s like some incredibly crappy version of the Iliad.

Oh, Kentucky. So the moral of this story is:  next time you go see your buddy next door and it turns out he’s already incredibly drunk (love the detail of “already” — as if it’s inevitable, but the timing made things a bit ticklish), that might not be the best time to start dickering over the price of a used lawnmower.

“One thing led to another, and before I knew it, there were knives and guns and everything just went haywire.”

He says his brother had a mark on his neck, where a knife was held. But Westmoreland’s loss was more permanent.

“They cut my beard and forced me to eat it,” he said.

I love the fact that it’s the News 18 BIG STORY.  And I love, love, love how the guys says he believes in the “la-awwwwww.”  And check out the mug shots of the two accused men!  Oh man!

Now I’m ready for the weekend.

My favorite joke

Hey, happy Veterans Day!  Thank you, veterans.  Thank you veterans’ families.  We pray for you every day.

We have the day off school, and we just got home from the doctor, where I got mini lectures because (a) my son only has two servings of milk a day, not three; (b) when I said, “I didn’t realize they offer the meningitis vaccine to kids this age.  I’d like to read up on it first, ” she took it to mean, “I can only hope that my entire family will get some o’ that fantastic meningitis ASAP”; (c) my son, who is 79 pounds, doesn’t ride in a booster seat. Gugh.  It wasn’t our regular doctor, thank goodness.  Our regular doctor thinks we’re hilarious, and lets us do whatever we want.

Also this morning, I was rude to some poor, earnest Bible thumpers — well, really they were so mild, they were more like Bible strokers — who came to the door when I was still in my PJ’s and the baby was naked and covered with yogurt.  WHY did I have to tell them we’re Catholic?  It was probably fairly obvious.  And then, attempting to spruce up a little, I reached for my eyeliner, only to discover that it was actually an X-Acto knife.  Yipes!  Well, now I’m awake!

Oh, so to make up for this post being late and about nothing, here is a joke.  I was doing a “My Favorite Joke” feature for a while, but I guess rather than emailing jokes to me, just put ‘em in the comment box.  This is the joke my daughter told me yesterday:

———-

Three guys are working on some scaffolding way up at the top of a skyscraper.  They take a lunch break.  The first guy opens his lunchbox and goes, “Aw, man, meatloaf again.”  Second guy opens his lunchbox and goes, “Aw, man, baloney again.”  Third guy opens his lunchbox and goes, “Aw, man, tuna salad again.”  They eat their lunches.

The next day, it’s lunch time again, and the first guy opens his lunchbox, and goes, “Aw man, meatloaf again.  You know, if I get meatloaf tomorrow, too, I’m going to jump off this skyscraper!”  Second guys opens his lunchbox and goes, “Aw man, baloney again.  You know, if I get baloney tomorrow, I’m going to jump off this skyscraper!”  Third guy opens his lunchbox and goes, “Aw man, tuna salad again.  You know, if I get tuna salad tomorrow, I’m going to jump off this skyscraper!”

Next day.  Lunchtime again.  First guy opens his lunchbox, cries, “Meatloaf!”  and leaps to his death.  Second guy opens his lunchbox, howls, “Baloney!” and leaps to his death.  Third guy opens his lunchbox, screams, “Tuna salad!” and leaps to his death.

Next day, at the funeral.  The widow of the first guy wails, “Oh, why oh why did I give him meatloaf in his lunch?”  The widow of the second guy moans, “Why oh why did I give him baloney?”

And the widow of the third guy says, “Don’t look at me!  He packs his own lunch.”

Highway to Hell

Just because I have a lot of kids, people assume I have a lot of kid-managing skills.  Not so.   In the last twelve years, I  have perfected really only two child-related talents:  ignoring screams, and buying spaghetti in bulk.  Other than that, I’m pretty much where I was at the beginning:  terrified, stymied, trying not to let them corner me.

How, for instance, do I deal with lots and lots and lots and lots of time in the car with four small children who have lots and lots and lots and lots of desire to be out of the car?  Haven’t figured that one out yet.  The reason this comes up is that, as part of my nefarious plan to erase all traces of labor, hardship and inconvenience from my life when we decided to send our oldest four children to a charter school, I have been spending an awful lot of time in the car.

Emphasis on the awful.

The four youngest children always come for the ride in the afternoon, and sometimes in the morning, too.  Sometimes they read or play with baby dolls during the ride; other times, they just sit there, quietly soaking their car seats.  Of course I know all about portable toys, books, snacks, window stickers, soothing or amusing music, “I spy,” and so on.  But some weeks, we spend so many hours in the car, it’s not a matter of passing the time.  We’re just living our lives, but in the car, you know?  We just do the things we always do, but we can’t get away from each other.

Here’s a little illustration. To comprehend the psychological freight inherent in the following drama, you have to know a few things:  first, that the three-year-old

 

is completely nuts, and likes nothing better than to start arguments about nothing at all; and second, the 18-month-old thinks the three-year-old is a god.

And one more thing:  it was raining.

3-year-old:  “It’s not raining.”

Little sister, parroting:  “Yainin’!”

3-year-old:  “No, it’s not raining!”

Little sister, blissfully playing along:  “Yeah, yainin’!”

3-year-old, in a rage:  “NO, it’s NOT raining, it’s NOT raining, it’s NOT raining!”

Little sister, joyfully agreeing with her idol:  “Yain-yain-yainin’!!!!!!!!!”

3-year-old, in a quivering ecstasy of fury:  “IT!  IS!  NOT!  RAI-AI-AI-AI-AI-AININNNNNNNNNNG!”

Little sister, transported with bliss at the wonderful camaraderie she was enjoying with her sister:  “YAAAAAAAAAAAININ’!”

And so on.

There was nothing that anyone could do.  The three-year-old had rocketed so far past the point of reason that she remained in her little orbit of hysteria for a good half hour; and when she came down, she was hungry.  And guess what?  I had forgotten to bring a snack.

Did I mention we were in the car for three hours that day?  I’m just glad we belong a religion that believes in the value of suffering.  Because, man, it’s only Tuesday . . .

My hobby

There are people who don’t understand drinking at all.  You can tell who they are because they say things like,”Isn’t it kind of cold for beer?” or  “I guess it’s okay, as long as you don’t feel like you depend on it” or “Yes, I had a Bahama Mama last weekend, and it was yummy!”

These people are drinkers in the same way as Thomas Kinkade is a painter:  there are enough superficial similarities to the real thing that the casual observer might be taken in — and yet, at the heart, there is this gulf which is vast.  Vast.

I think what people don’t understand is that your relationship with alcohol develops over time, just like in a good marriage.  At first it’s all infatuation and fireworks and throwing up.  But it’s only later, after many years of fidelity and forgiveness, missteps and recovery, that you and your drink can look each other in the eye and say, “Yes, I need you, and you need me.  And I’m all right with that.  Oh, I could live without you — I wouldn’t drop dead if you walked out of my life forever, and I know I could even learn to be happy without you.  But why would I want to?  You’ve been there with me through all the best times of my life, and all the worst, too.  Even when you couldn’t be there, like when the nurse was all, ‘You are 80% effaced; it is time to put that bottledown!’, you were notable by your absence.  Oh alcohol, I am a part of you; and you, pound by blubbery pound, are becoming more and more a part of me.”

What non-drinkers don’t understand is that the city of Boozopolis is a beautiful and variegated place.   Got a few hours to burn?  This bottle of gin looks open and accommodating, willing to let you take the lead, and no hard feelings if it’s just a quickie.  Bourbon is there to take your hand and let you enjoy your misery for a while.  Tequila is a great way to find out whether or not you’ve grown up in the last ten years.  Red wine becomes a river of conversation which appears insightful at the time, and makes room in your heart for all the terrible Irish music you’ve been denied all your sober life.  Or maybe you’re just thirsty?  Well, then, my friend, it is time to have a beer.

I’m not trying to preach, and I’m not trying to nag.  I’m just trying to say that an awful lot of you could be doing a lot more to pick up that glass from time to time, you know? I try my hardest, but I’m only one woman.

Well, what did you do on your weekend?

7 Silly Things that Make Me Laugh

–1–

Store brand cereal names.   When I was little, manufacturers of generic food didn’t bother trying to snare the thrifty shopper by putting grinning strawberries or wacky breakfast raccoons on the box — it was just a white box with black letters, stating the legal nomenclature of the grain product you were about to consume.

Today, however, they try and make it sound like it’s some kind of close cousin to the Real Thing, without infringing on any copyrights. Some of them just try to sound like the brand name, like Tasteeo-s instead of Cheerios.  Then some of them are just kind of disconcertingly descriptive:   Crispy Hexagons, Corn Spheres.  But some of them . . . some of them are just a cereal mystery, and they make me laugh.  And the greatest of these is Confruity Crisp.

–2–

Renita Jablonski from the radio show Marketplace.  I realize this makes me an eleven-year-old boy, but ever time I hear her name, my brain giggles like Beavis and Butthead.  See, cuz, it kinda sounds like Heywood . . . oh, never mind.

–3–

My three-year-old daughter says “who” when she means “what.”  I occasionally correct her, but it’s just too much fun to see her come into the kitchen, wrinkle her nose and say, “Who’s that smell?”  It’s your supper, that’s who.

–4–

The Howard Dean scream.  It just never gets old.

–5–

Sometimes, when my husband is changing a diaper, he puts the clean diaper on his head, and then pretends he can’t find it. Gets me every time.

–6–

That scene in 30 Rock where all the guys are sleeping on the couches, and one of them takes a bite of his sandwich in his sleep.  I can’t believe they’re still making that show!  It’s so funny, it should have been canceled by now (we’re up to season 4 on Netflix).

–7–

Well, in keeping with the way things have been going around here lately, I hate this post and couldn’t finish it, but couldn’t do anything else until it was done.  I guess I should be grateful to have six things that make me laugh, but instead I was just hung up on how bummed I was that I put my beer on the back of the couch for a second, only to discover that the back of the couch wasn’t up against the wall after all, and so that was the end of my beer.  I hate that couch so much, I’m glad it got beer spilled all down the back and on its stupid confruity little skirt ruffle; but still, I had to clean up the beer.  It was a Corona, too!  Oh, anyway, so while I was looking for a towel, my husband said that fart jokes always make me laugh.  I don’t think this is strictly true, but on the other hand, we’ve been together for a while now, so I guess he would know.

Okay, okay, wait.  It does make me laugh when someone says “poot” instead of “fart.”  Poot!  That’s not even a word.

Oh, boy.  Well, check out our lovely hostess Jen Fulwiler of Conversion Diary for Seven Quick Takes, and find out how the normals are doing it.

So tell me: What are you reading?

It’s November, it’s dark, I have to scrape the effing windshield to drive to the dump, and life is only just barely worth living until March.  So let’s talk about books.

I’m just coming off of a long, ugly stint with Taylor Caldwell’s ridiculous novel Answer As a Man.  Oh, that woman is embarrassing.  What a waste of plot!  I think she took a writing class called “Show, don’t tell,” but someone told her it was Opposite Day.  I’d show you a passage of what she tries to pass off as character development, but not only did I already throw the book away, I dumped coffee grounds on top so no one would fish it out of the garbage.

Caldwell seems to have heavily consulted The Comprehensive Thesaurus of Tedious Irish Stereotypes.  For openers, she turned to the  entry for “bitter old man who loves and hates with equal ferocity,” and proceeded to copy out all the adjectives she thought the reader would understand.  And that, thought Caldwell, made chapter one.   I read the whole thing because — I don’t know, I guess it’s like getting on the merry-go-round.  It’s not as if you’re going to end up somewhere unexpected, but you already paid for your ticket, so you might as well sit there until the ride is over.

Then I picked up Watership Down, and promptly fell asleep.  I don’t know if it was that boring, or I was just too tired, but it fell behind the bed and I can’t reach it now, so that’s that.

Then I picked up Clockers by Richard Price. Okay, now we have a novel.    The narrator understands his characters, and they are real people, who might do anything.  They might be angry at themselves, or feel ashamed, or feel unwarranted pride, or not understand why they do what they do — but it all feels like real life, down to the last detail.

Here’s an early example:  Strike, a 19-year-old low level drug dealer, drinks vanilla Yoo-Hoo throughout the book.  He has a stomach ulcer, and the vanilla cools the pain a little.  This kind of detail tells you so much about the guy:  that he’s a child, that he suffers like a man, that he tries to heal himself, that real medicine (for the body and for the soul) is just not available to him. At one point, he finds himself in a bar, and not knowing what else to order, he asks for vanilla Yoo-Hoo.  The bartender offers him a glass of non-dairy creamer.  This is how the world treats Strike and his ulcer.

This book just bleeds sympathy.  For everyone, even the evildoers.  That’s what a great novel does:  it understands.  That’s what separates Dostoevsky from Tolstoy:  Tolstoy understood, all right, but as I get older, I see his contempt for his characters more and more, and it kind of takes the edge off.  Dostoevsky, though, the reader feels, is on his knees the whole time he is writing.

Richard Price (okay, I’m not saying he’s Dostoevsky or even Tolstoy.  He has really got something, though) doesn’t gush or manipulate or wallow, but the prose cleanly and steadily offers up real people for us to see.   This author is so confident of his skill, he doesn’t need to tell us everything we need to know up front — because when does that happen in real life?  We learn what the characters are capable of little by little, at the same pace as they learn about themselves.  I’m sorry I’m just too darn lazy to pick out passages to quote, but take my word for it, this guy knows what he is doing.

Lots of profanities, obscenities, and violence in this book.  But I don’t think it’s disgusting, and so far, it’s not depressing.   The tone isn’t marinating in that inexplicable, sadistic animus against the reader, like so many modern novels (The Corrections, Geek Love – -why do I read these things??).  I’m about halfway through, and have high hopes (if you’ve read it, please don’t give anything away!).  I have a hard time putting this book down.  Great plot, incredible dialogue, twists and turns, and the author never takes the easy way out — but it’s all so natural.  Really amazing skill.

So what are you reading?  Do you plan to finish it?  Is it a book to be tossed aside lightly?  Or should it be thrown with great force?

All politics is local politics

I have this newspaper picture framed:

The article, which I believe ran in what was then the Monadnock Ledger, went like this:

Junkyard owner Daniel Kingery can strip used cars, but he can’t host strippers, according to zoning board members.

The board on Tuesday rejected an appeal by Kingery, who sought to run a strip club in his junkyard by calling it a “cultural facility.”

He had been told by the town’s code enforcement officer to close his club on Route 202 North.

But Kingery argued his business is a cultural facility, like a musuem, which is permitted in a rural zone.

Town officials said there’s nothing “cultural” about strippers dancing in a junkyard, and the zoning board agreed.  They ruled Kingery’s business has no place in a rural zone and is banned by an anti-pornography zoning law that voters adopted last month.

The board said Kingery offered no evidence that his club is cultural, and that is was clear from his testimony that it was sexually oriented.

Kingery said he would appeal to Hillsborough County Superior Court.

In the picture, he’s attempting to make his case by reading the dictionary entry for the word “cultural.”

And that is why I’m not going to vote today.

 

 

 

Okay, okay, so I’ll vote today.  But I’m not going to like it!  I’ll tell you why.

It’s because you and I are the people on the zoning board.  We have a day job, right?  We’ve been working all day, and we really just want to go home and have a burger and a beer and watch some stupid TV.  But it’s an election year, so purely out of an inescapable sense of civic duty, we put on a clean shirt and head out to the town hall.  And there we sit in a cold, metal folding chair, listening to Dan Kingery read the defnition for “culture” out of the dictionary.

Maybe you’re the Sipowicz-like guy in the foreground, with his orthopedic sneakers and his forbearing face of stone, willing to listen forever as the guy buries himself in his own b.s.  Maybe you’re the stringy old man with the work shirt and the razor-sharp part in his greasy old hair, who’s participating mostly out of spite.  Maybe you’re the wounded-looking matron who’s heard this kind of nonsense one too many times, and just wants to sign a petition for a new wheelchair ramp in front of the library and go home.  Or maybe you’re the trunk-legged old bat at the end of the row, who’s happily drawing kitties in her notebook as the meeting goes on and on and on.

Point is, this is you, the voter:  the one with the decency to show up one more time, drum up a little faith in the system, donate a few more hours of your precious time in case someone has something useful to say to you.

And you know who the politicians are.  They’re all Dan Kingery.  Doesn’t matter how you vote — this is, more or less, who you’re voting for:

The guy didn’t even wash his beard before coming to the meeting.  He didn’t even put on his best flannel shirt.  The Dan Kingerys who want your vote have already set up this hideous junkyard in your backyard, and there’s nothing anyone can do about that — but now they’re trying to bring in strippers, too.

Because there’s two things he believes:  that he deserves to get what he wants, and that everyone else is some kind of idiot.  Their only plan is to make this county a little bit crappier, but they won’t be satisfied with that — they have to try and make it seem like they’re doing you a favor, too.

Man, I wish there were a way of giving someone, like, a stink vote.  Like: okay, you get my ballot, but you need to know that you are not fooling me for one second.  You need to know that I will vote for you because your stench isn’t quite as stenchy as the guy from the Stench Party.

But just because I voted for you, that doesn’t mean I think you smell all right.  You don’t get my trust, you don’t get my support, you don’t get my approval.  All you get is my stinking stink vote.

I’ll vote, I’ll vote!  Now leave me alone.

Thursday Throwback: Is Nothing Profane?

This post originally ran about three years ago.  This year, our house will be launching the following into an unsuspecting world:  Harry Potter, Aphrodite, a cat, the grim reaper, a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle,  a Pink Mummy Ghost (this is a costume which started off weird and gets more confusing each year), Ming Ming, and a confused and angry baby.

You can see by the preponderance of trademarked characters that, in the three years since I wrote this piece, my give-a-damn has broken.

Oh, Halloween!

If you are lucky enough to slide unharmed through the Scylla and Charybdis of the Wiccans’ Samhain and decent people’s All Saint’s Day, you will probably be thinking about Halloween costumes for your kids.

I started having kids pretty young, so I went directly from wearing costumes myself to making costumes for my kids. The type of costume changed, of course. When you’re a 19-year-old pseudo intellectual, it seems hilarious to dress up as Aristotle’s Incontinent Man; but for your kids, you really need to reign in the originality. It’s less scarring that way.

The more insane daily life is, the more prone I am to wildly ambitious homemade costume ideas. If I’m pregnant, teaching several kids at home, buying a new house, going to law school, and launching an organic chinchilla farm, that’s when it seems like a good idea to whip up a batch of papier-mache. How hard could it really be to dress any reasonably robust six-year-old as an Elizabethan headless horseman, with false legs, of course, so it looks like he’s really riding on the golden Sphinx part, when he’s actually walking? If I could get a little cooperation around here, I could get something done for a change.

But my goal in these days of relative calm (I’m not pregnant, we’re unpacked and not packing, no one has a new job, and all the pets are dead) is to dress the kids in such a way that it won’t make them cry.

This is not as easy as it sounds, when you have kids who tend to cry when you do exactly what they specifically asked for, several times, with witnesses.

Also working against me is one three-year-old boy who gets angry when he’s having fun. You let him wear a cape and stay up late, and surround him with people who can’t believe how adorable he is, and who want to give him lots of candy . . . and it really rubs him the wrong way.  This is the same kid who steps outside into the golden sunshine, takes a look at the butterflies wafting over the heads of gentle daisies, and yells at the top of his lungs, “IT IS NOT A BOOTIFUL DAY!”

But my biggest handicap is, as usual, myself. I know it’s supposed to be a kids’ holiday, and I genuinely want the little termites to be happy.   But I’m sick. I have a disease which makes it seem important to stay up until dawn getting the tin foil details of Princess Leia’s belt exactly right, even though I know darn well that it’s going to be dark out, and no one without infrared vision could notice any flaw of authenticity, and no one with or without infrared vision would care.

Well, it’s a holiday, and that means it has to be someone’s turn to ruin things — might as well be me. But I’ll tell you the thing I really enjoy about Halloween: at least it’s not a religious holiday — I mean, Halloween as a “boo, eek, Kit-kat and Smartees, oh-how-cute” day, setting aside  the issue of saints and souls and praying and such, which is for a different day.

Halloween is not like Christmas, or Easter, or Thanksgiving — you’re not supposed to be making sure your kids aren’t missing the deeper meaning of it all, and not being too materialistic, and enjoying happy times with your family, while simultaneously performing the back-breaking labor of organizing a pleasant day.

So when I tear around the house with a hot glue gun, insisting that the toddler can make supper for herself because I’m busy, dammit . . . it’s just Halloween! I may be acting like a jerk, but at least it’s not blasphemy.

 

I’ve always wondered

. . .what English sounds like to non-English speakers.  Now, I’m not sure I know (I found the repeated use of the word “ciusol” somewhat less than convincing), but I certainly have seen something I’ve never seen before.  And it’s only Wednesday.

(thanks to my little brother Izzy for the link, even though he should be doing his Existentialism homework or something)

You can’t be any poorer than dead – UPDATED

Trick-or-treaters might be coming around with UNICEF donation boxes.  Don’t give ‘em a dime — UNICEF pushes for abortion and sterilization as part of its efforts to improve the lives of women and children.  Beyond the immediate irony of that idea, it’s not even good policy.  According to CatholicCulture.org (emphasis mine):

Pro-family UN watchers are concerned that [UNICEF’S] disproportionate focus on unsafe abortion, based upon questionable maternal mortality figures, detracts from addressing the major health risks to pregnant women in the developing world. Experts say these are severe bleeding, eclampsia, and obstructed labor. By UNFPA’s own admission in a 2004 report, the most important means of reducing maternal mortality is not access to contraceptives and legal abortion but the presence of skilled birth attendants and access to emergency obstetric care.

Imagine:  those backward, third-world women would rather survive childbirth than get help killing their children.  Savages.

 

Abortion proponents often link unsafe abortion and maternal mortality to push for legal, “safe” abortion. Critics of this argument are quick to point out that in Poland, when abortion was severely restricted in 1993, the country showed a sharp decline in the abortion rate and a decline in maternal deaths. In Ireland, where abortion remains illegal, the country reports one of the lowest maternal mortality rates in the world. By contrast, while the United States has had abortion on demand since 1973, this year the US reported a rise in maternal deaths.

Oh, and look at this!  I was searching for an image for this post, and turned up this ad:

It’s an ad placed by the Palestinian Youth Association for Leadership and Rights Activation, and shows an axe hacking into the Star of David.   And looky!  There’s the UNICEF sponsorship logo, down at the bottom left.  (Image source and more information here.)

(Wait, let me save the very vocal minority here a little trouble:  Israel has committed atrocities!  They are the true criminals here!  Ms. Fisher’s blind, jingoistic support of Israel is what’s wrong with the Church and the world in general!  Aieeeeee, boogie boogie boogie, somebody said something about the Jooooooos!

Hokey doke.  Let’s just think about this for a second.  What is UNICEF for, again?  According to their website, it “works for children’s rights, their survival, development and protection.”

You know, with an axe.)

I’m not in favor of burdening young children with more bad news than they need to know.  If mini Buzz Lightyear shows up on your porch with a UNICEF donation box, just say, “No thanks, but here’s your fun size Snickers.”  But if your kid is being pressured by his school to use these collection boxes, you can tell him what I just said to my daughter:  UNICEF does some good things, but they also do a lot of bad things, and we don’t want to help them hurt people.  There are other charities that do a better job of helping poor people, so we give our money to them instead.

Here is our favorite charity, run by the Church with an incredibly low overhead:  Save a Family Plan.  Among other programs, you can choose a plan in which your family sponsors a desperate family in India, helping them to become educated and self-sufficient within a few years.    Boy, they get the job done.  And somehow they manage to do it without killing anyone.

UPDATE:

Sandy, an alert reader, sent the following links to clarify the connection between UNICEF and PYALRA, the organization that ran the ad above.  According to Israel National News,

“In a statement dated March 23, UNICEF president, Caryl M. Stern, denounced the “incorrect use of the UNICEF logo” and stated that “UNICEF was not consulted by PYALARA about the use of its logo in a poster announcing a youth broadcast and it condemns the use of its logo to imply endorsement of political opinions. Neither the poster nor the television program it advertises reflect UNICEF’s policies or its views.” Ms. Stern added that “UNICEF’s partnership agreement with PYALARA ended in January 2010” and that “UNICEF will be carefully reviewing any proposed future partnerships with PYALARA.”

Glad to hear it.  UNICEF still stinks, but at least this time, it turns out I was the one going “Aieee, the Joooos.”  Sorry about that!

Here are a few more links with more information about this story

http://thebulletin.us/articles/2010/03/31/news/world/doc4bafdbe416e47247495742.txt

From the Anti Defamation League: http://www.adl.org/Internet_Rumors/UNICEF.htm