treasure found

keaton graduated from college with a degree in oceanography, her dreams of becoming a treasure hunter quickly dashed by the realities of living on land.
although i have not shared this with her, i think it was a temporary derailment for it is clear she later found her treasure when she scooped me up from the depths.
a case of "all that glitters is not gold" if ever there was.
now the reason i have not shared this with her is because she might have an entirely different perspective.
but she would be wrong, and i don't feel like arguing because arguing isn't good for the glit—as we treasured types fondly call it.

boss don - ideas on thinking

i said, ya know boss don, the ceo told us it’s a new era and to think out of the box.
boss don said, yeah well if i catch ya thinking at all, you’ll be thinking yourself right out of a job.

i thought to myself, that must be the new era part.

the hair washing dilemma

i'm about to take off to get my quarterly haircut.
here's the dilemma.
i wash my hair before i go.
they wash it again before it gets cut.
i wash it later to get the hair stiffening gel out.
that's too many hair washings to be considered the environmentally friendly guy i am.
i need to eliminate one but not sure which.

(it is at times like this that i wish i could use some childhood commonsense: get rid of all of them.)

the international society of poets who rhyme stuff

i said, "hey, remember that poem, "rotten walnuts", that i wrote last month? well i submitted it to the international society of poets who rhyme stuff run by world renown poeteer howard ely."
my son replied, “how could i forget?”
i said, “well, mr. smarty pants, it’s so good they want to put it in a handsome, 100% synthetic leatherette bound, poetry anthology called, the everlasting light of american and some canadian but not the french parts poetry anthology. how about them apples?”

my son said, “it's a scam. howard ely doesn't even exist.”

i said, “oh you’re just jealous of your old man's poetry skills.”

he said, “dad, you rhymed "rotten walnuts" with "gotten doughnuts". the poem was pedestrian at best.”

i said, “what do ya mean? i thought that was so genius.” i took pause to ponder his dismissive attitude.
then i said, “you know for a ten year old you’re a little too big for your britches sometimes.”

he said, “okay, you're right. hey, you want to play chess?”
i said, “oh sure. can't beat me at rhyming. so switch to something you can win at.”

he said, “fine big baby, how about candy land?”

i said, “now your talkin'. prepare to eat dirt gummy boy!”

(from the files) 315. manstake mulligan!

keaton said, i see you didn’t get the garbage out in time for the garbage truck.
i yelled, manstake mulligan!
she said, are you sure you want to do that? it’s so early in the day and you know you are playing with a really high handicap ever since you killed my prized flowering clematis because you thought it was poison ivy (see post #185 for details).
i said, yeah, well anything whose name sounds like a female private part is asking for trouble besides i’m feeling on top of my man game.
she shook her head and said, god you're impossible sometimes.
and i said, the impossible dream honey bunch.
then she said, i'm going to load up on some frozen porkchops. so be very careful little man.
she was right.
within minutes i had set the kitchen ablaze making her a cup of earl grey and then smashed her car’s rear bumper backing up into an oak tree that’s only been there for like nineteen years now.

it’s apparent i need to spend more time at the practice tea and driving range.

upswing in lemon suicides has authorities baffled

authorities are baffled by an uptick in lemon suicides.
jake persimmons, special lemon agent to the florida board of agriculture, reported that there have been six such suicides in the past week alone.
he believes it may be related to global warming but isn't prepared to comment officially until he has had a chance to review his findings with al gore.
until that time, he is recommending that homemakers securely store any lemon juicer that might be sitting around on the counter, as it seems to be the instrument of choice.

(warning: the following image is graphic and might be disturbing to some fruit lovers.)

the donald is back

what's the difference between donald trump and a recurring hemorrhoid?
they're both a pain in the ass but one comes with bad hair.

donald trump teased cpac, a particularly scared group of white folk, with promises of tossing that thing on top of his skull in the 2012 presidential ring.
ever the self-promoter, he wowed the fearful with his wild brand of tough talk.

the reason he is considering running, besides the unmentionable limelight, is that america is not respected in the world and he, as a business man, is sick of hearing about it from his suppliers in india and china.
these ceo types always confuse respect with fear.
i had plenty of bosses and executives i feared and plenty i respected.
and never were they the same people.
so let's be clear, donald wants people to fear us.
well i do agree if that's what we want then a good start would be to elect him as president.

later on, when his reading was interrupted by an exuberant ron paul fan, he flippantly replied that ron paul had zero chance of winning the election.
again, that might be true, but that's pretty funny coming from the one guy ron paul can beat.

back on track, he spun his education by claiming he owes his running-the-country smarts to attending military school and the wharton school of business.
it is true he attended both, but don't think for a second he meant west point and an mba.
rather think high school (because he was acting up and needed the firm hand of regimen), two years at fordham, and few at wharton, obtaining a bachelor's in economics for all his trouble.

finally, like reading bullet points from a presentation, he crisply declared to be pro-life and pro-guns.
with a straight face.
now i don't know about you, but i haven't met a gun yet that procreates.
if anything, they are population thinners sure as shootin'.
i have never understood how anyone can coherently claim those two thoughts in the same breath.
and when you throw god into the mix, which he did not do thank god, well, my head might just explode, which isn't very pro-life but plenty pro-gun.

finally, he proclaimed that if he were president, all he would need is a good admiral with a few ships and he'd get rid of pirates forever.
cheers of the fearful erupted!
and i thought, this, more than anything else, is what makes donald just like all the others.
an honored graduate of a military school in 1964 when the vietnam war was in full swing and he opted for a college deferment and a job with daddy trump.
he chose not to serve.
and now he has no problem talking tough at the expense of others lives.
just like all the other big talkin' conservative chicken hawks.

donald was on msnbc this morning already basking in the attention.
it's what he does.
well!
and he went on and on about how he speaks the truth, which is his way of saying he parses the truth and then speaks it.

well the non-parsed truth is that the donald has never really known what it's like not to have money.
he has been fed by the proverbial silver spoon.
and to his credit he has worked hard wheeling and dealing that silver spoon into an egocentric collection of buildings, hotels, golf courses and yes, beauty pageants.
i get that.
it has been hard work, which he apparently loves.
but he knows nothing else.
so when he gets all blustery and full of himself and announces he'll eliminate obama care and replace it, he says it from a position of priveleged ignorance.
and replace it with what?
lower taxes for himself and higher tariffs for his competition?

the non-parsed truth is he is a joke and a boor with little to offer a world in the throes of the shitter.

oh listen to me.
i sure can go on and on when i get a little fired up.
well enough said.
time to invest in a boatload of preparation h and scissors.

benny gets not politically correct

benny said, i know it's not politically correct but—
i said, stop!
benny said, what?
and i said, whenever you start with "not politically correct", what you really mean is what you're about to say is going to offend people but you don't care about your insensitivity because the offended should just get over it.
benny said, no it doesn't mister put-words-in-my-mouth.
i said, fine then. what does it mean?
benny said, just that i know liberals, like you, are going to be upset because what i'm about to say is the truth and you liberals don't like the truth.
i said, okay then, tell me what truth it is that i don't want to hear.
benny said, geez! what i was goin' to say was, i know it's not politically correct but you could blindfold an oriental with a strand of spaghetti if you had to.
i said, you are an idiot!
benny said, see! that's what i mean! the truth is they are from the orient so they're oriental. fine! I'll call them asian if that'll make you feel any better.
i said, are those ping golf clubs of yours still willed to me?
benny said, yeah.
i said, do me a favor and give them to someone else so that i might be released from the devil's bond.

don't tell me life isn't unfair

i have religiously brushed and flossed my teeth daily, faithfully scheduled two dental check-ups and a periodontist cleaning a year including fluoride treatments and jet powered gum washing, and willingly absorbed enough gamma rays to render a wild mustang impotent.
and for my efforts, i still have amassed four root canals, four yanked wisdom teeth, more crowns than in history of english royalty, and enough mercury to damage the brain of a personal injury lawyer.

so don't tell me life isn't unfair.

a curl up day

i have no idea what it's doing outside.
this has been a winter wonderland of weather.
rain, freezing rain, sleet, wet snow, dry snow, frozen cats and dogs.
today is something different still.
freezing smog maybe.
the sort of weather stephen king writes about.
well, whatever it is, it's a good day for many to curl up with a good book.
as for me, i'll curl up with a cup of joe and a good thought, wishing keaton were here.

i miss her bad sometimes.

time for word association

in order to give you an idea of how my brain works, i thought i'd try a word association and then break down the thought process for you.
besides my pseudo step daughter, alix, is working from home due to the ice storm we are enduring and can give me a word off the top of her head.

"alix, a word please, if you don't mind!"
she's thinking but i'm not sure she is thinking of a word.
"sometime today if you can!"
now she's looking at me like her mom does when she's reaching for a frozen pork chop.
"any word will do!"
"street!"
"you're sure? you can pick any word and that's what you come up with? street?"
"yes, street!"
"street it is then. thank you."

and the first thing that comes to mind is, "wooden spoon", which i know is two words but if i just said wooden i'd be explaining that it is wooden spoon anyway.

[truthfully? they are not the first words that came to mind. those would be "that's", followed closely by "dumb". but those don't count, and if revealed, would only fuel what already is what might only be described as a cairo like mood here as alix and i enter into day two of winter housebound horror.]

so here is how i came up with "wooden spoon".

when i hear "street", i remember having a particularly hearty wooden spoon session with ma for swimming around in a clogged drainage pool at the bottom of the street we lived on.
normally this never would have been an issue.
in fact, it was encouraged, especially if there was lightning about.
unfortunately, the street had been freshly tarred earlier in the day, and thus, so became our legs, arms, bellies and hair after the swimming.
i would learn soon after that ma meant it literally when she screamed, "i'll beat the tar out of you."

and that's a little inside look into the brain operation of a person such as myself.