"now i've heard it all"

when people tell me, "now i've heard it all", i tell them "only if you go completely deaf or michele bachmann goes completely dumb.

a difference of valentine opinion

keaton said, for valentine's day i'm getting you a snow blower. how about that honey?
i said, geeh, you must really love me?
keaton said, oh, i do!
then she asked, so what are you getting me?
and i said, well in light of this interesting development, all sorts of possibilities are opened up. let me see.
i thought for a second, still dizzy over the love gift she got me.
so it hit me, real hard, a window of opportunity.
i said, a brand new, top-of-the-line ir—
she said, sorry to interrupt but let me save you from a frozen pork chop. it doesn't work that way, it'll never work that way.

the truth is i pretty much knew that but i always take every opportunity to test the "never" part when i think the chances of a frozen pork chop beat down is minimal, and once again i was successful and she unwavering.
there will be another day.
and i will simply wear her out, even if i take a few lumps along the way.

you've gotta love benny

i'm out diggin the driveway clear of another 14 inches of snow, when benny is passing through and pulls over.
benny said, hey man! what ya doin'?
i said, what does it look like i'm doin'?
benny said, yeah i see. i get my driveway plowed. you should think about it. you're gettin' to old for this shit.
i said, nah, it's my exercise, but i have to admit this is a lot of snow.
benny said, yeah, i just don't remember winter being this bad when i was growing up.
i said, i don't know. i seem to remember snow being higher than me.
benny said, this just seems like a lot more and colder too.
i said, well what part of jersey did you grow up in. ya must have grown up near the shore or something.
benny said, nope. i grew up just outside of houston. ya know, texas..
then he kinda squinted his eyes and stared down the road all contemplative and all, as if he was recalling his mild childhood winters.
then he said, i guess i'll be goin' partner.
and i thought real sarcastic like, don't remember winters being this bad.
then i said, yeah i gotta get back to work here.

and just like that, off he went into the sunset accept it was the sunrise, but no one ever goes into the sunrise, especially an idiot cowboy from texas. so i said sunset.

getting old

lately i can’t hear myself think as well as i used to and have to ask myself, “i’m sorry. can you repeat that?”.
unfortunately my mind is growing more crotchety as well, and sometimes out of frustration answers, “oh, forget it!”, which is probably the next thing i'll do anyway.

definition of comedy

i'm reading a book that reveals comedy writing secrets.
first, comedians do a lot of things well but keeping secrets isn't one of them.
second, the secrets they are suppose to keep are ho hum at best.
all of which goes to show why they are better off being comedians than ... um ... let's say cia operatives or ceos.

anyway, the book opens up asking the question, what is comedy, to which steve martin is quoted as answering, "comedy is the art of making people laugh without making them puke."
i thought that is a funny definition for sure, but then what else should i expect from a funny guy.
unfortunately though it isn't an answer that really does it for me.
so i asked myself the same question and after sleeping on it, i woke this morning with my answer.

comedy is the complete opposite of death.

i think that pretty much covers it.

once upon a time

once upon a time, i thought i was hercules.
to prove it to myself, i stuck my dad's prized prudential, ten year anniversary, metal ruler between the radiator coils and using my newly acquired supernatural strength, along with some smart leveraging techniques, i bent it.
i showed the results to my younger brothers.
it scared them.
but only recently i learned not for the obvious reason—that i had in fact become hercules.
it scared them that i was fourteen and their older brother.


i was what i guess they considered an odd egg and bad for girl business.
personally, i just had a furtive imagination.
whatever, i still bent it.

"what's bob gonna learn us next?"

nuttin.
how about them apples!
because whatever i've learned so far is just not worth passing on.

i say this because snooki's book has just been listed in the new york times best seller list, coming in at number 24.
snooki, to her credit, humbly tweeted that she can't believe her good fortune, which i'm willing to say is 140 more characters than she actually wrote in her book.

i make no bones about it.
i don't get it.
this news has given me a splitting infinitive headache, leaving my participle dangling and my innards all consonated.
i'm thinking of getting a semicolonoscopy to tell ya the truth.
god i look forward to senility.

(okay, okay, okay. that was a lot of hubbabubba just to get to some nerdy wordplay i came up with at 4:20 this morning. such is my life these days.)

when does my madness end?

a dread came over me this morning while watching animal planet at 6 in the morn.
i'm terrified of heights and i love meat.
i just know if i don't start smartening up soon, i'm coming back in my next life as a vegetarian vulture.
and when i consider my poor previous life (i.e., a cobbler who made those court jester shoes with bells on the curled pointy toes) and the certainty of my next life, i'm simply left to wonder when does my madness end?

(from the files) 403. when men get sick

i’m dying.
fever, shakes, aching muscles, sweats, chills.
and i’m all by myself.
but that’s okay, just carry on with your healthy lives.
i’ll maje due. (oops, “make due”; i'm too weak to backspace and correvt it.)

i’m hallucinating as well.
i think.
mainly on account of there is a nude statue of margaret thatcher in the bathroom taking a shower.
but that’s okay if she's real.
excuse me for a moment.
"i'm not fetching you a linen towel, maggie! you’re a statue for chrissakes! just drip dry ya demanding old plaster biddy!"
sorry about that.

yeah, anyway, when men get sick, we pretty much just carry on without complaining or burdening those more fortunate healthy ones around us.

holy smokes!
gotta get outta my death bed.
maggie is in the front yard posing like some sort of nude.
gotta coax her inside before i've got an international incident.
but i'm not complaining.

ah ah ah choo!

repealing the healthcare bill

repealing the healthcare bill is akin to throwing the sick baby out with the pork barrel.

fireballs and lullabies

what's that noise over my head? why it's spinning fireballs lobbed from the Right and from the Left over an awoken violence they had lullabied to sleep with their unsettling lyrics of fear, closed with a good night kiss and whisper of  "sweet dreams".

feel like twenty again!

i just got done shovelling the driveway out of three inches of snow.
boy, i felt like i was 20 years old again.
the problem is that in about two hours i'm gonna feel like 96.
but if i average them out, it's a wash.

i was the sorta kid ...

i was the sorta kid when asked who i liked more, maryann or ginger, i always mumbled under my breath, mrs. howell. i don't know, i just thought i had a better chance of getting her, given the chance.

check out "this and that" for a little winter story

with all this talk of snow and cold, i dusted off a short story about one particular snow day that nearly wiped out the ten year old population of madison street, glen ridge, new jersey. not because of weather but because of frozen brains and the Flying Duchess.

breaking news: simon & schuster bow to huck finn pressure

in the shadow of the latest editing of huckleberry finn to remove the "n" word, simon & schuster has quietly re-released snooki's new novel, a shore thing, having edited out the words "bitch" and "ass", as well as the "c" word. as a result, the book is now being sold as a pamphlet, available at the check-out lines of targeted jersey shore riteaids and walgreens.

man it's cold

it's the kind of numbing cold james joyce called scrotum tightening, which pretty much sums it up, but i am thankful for it is enough to let me joy in simple warmth, the sigh of my dog, a bowl of soup and the thawing touch of someone i love—some things i too often take for granted.

593. can count on benny

i said, hey benny, what's with your front yard? it's all ripped up.
he said, we're putting in a new walkway. it's all part of our 2011 home improvement plan.
i said, oh yeah? cement?
he said, no slate.
i asked, why not cement?
he said, i don't like it.
so i said, what are you anti-cementic or something?

then he laughed til stuff came out his nose and ears, and noises shot out his buttocks because i can always count on benny for that.
it's like taking candy from a child really.

a plea on dick clark's behalf

don't get me wrong.
i love dick clark.
i'm a child of american bandstand for cryin' out loud.
which leads me to ask, could there be a more disturbing way to ring in the new year than to struggle to understand what the poor guy is trying to say?
i suggest not.
even my friend benny makes more sense and he's always fully inebriated.
i mean at least give us some subtitles so we can work with him a little.
is that asking too much?
i'm beggin' ya, please!