Absquatulate

Who's Got The Rubber Chicken in the Senate

One thing I love about the internet is the ability to share good natured practical jokes instantaneously. It's good free press for the senators who go along with it, and big ol' raspberries to those who didn't.

A Surefire Way to Screw Up Your Head:

1. Read a rather graphic yet gripping blog purportedly written by "The Widow" regarding the suicide of her husband.
2. Go see "Death of a Salesman" at GEVA (I hadn't seen nor read it until now)
3. Listen to "Deloused in the Comatorium" by Mars Volta (rumored to have been written in honor of a friend who committed suicide.)

The three of them happening across my path on the same day was accidental, but that did little to soften the downard spin on my mood, to say the least.

Hours of Testimony...

... summed up in this handy flowchart. The sad thing is, it really does sum up the proceedings (at least from what I've heard and read.)

New Meaning for the Word Nude.

Every morning my hubby and I go to a gym and work out together. As a result I've been spending every morning in the women's locker room and I'm facinated with the unspoken social etiquette that is followed in this particular gym. The rules can be broken down roughly like this:

• Unless the locker room is very crowded leave at least one locker empty between occupied lockers. The lockers are about 1.5 ft. wide and leaving a few inbetween you and your mate usually reduces the incidents of elbows connecting with the lower back of your neighbor while pulling on pantyhose.
• Flip flops are required.
• If in the sauna, please wear at the VERY LEAST a towel.
• It's preferred that walking to or from the showers you have on underpants or at least a towel. Nude is okay but not the norm. We will all peg you as a swimmer for doing this.
• Is it NOT okay to do anything else while nude. Your first priority should be to towel off and put on some underwear. You should NOT do any of the following before putting on underpants:
  • Blow dry your hair.
  • Bend over in front of everyone and root around in your bag for a minute or two
  • LAY DOWN in the sauna, thereby hogging all the benchspace *and* making it awkward for anybody else who's in there
• Ask before taking a hairdryer
• Don't stare at anybody while they are in a state of undress

Tangential to these obersvations is the case of the two naked friends. From the day they started coming on a semi-regular basis they select a locker right next to someone else even though there might be other lockers available a few feet away and were generally surly and rude to other people in the locker room. Apparently a few months is not enough time for them to pick up on the aforementioned etiquette. But the *real* reason why we morning regulars gossip about them is because they walk around naked. Gents before you start getting a hard-on thinking about these naked ladies walking around, let me assure you these are NOT, I repeat, NOT nubile 19 year olds but very middle aged potato ladies. And so they come out of the shower, sit their bare ass down on the benches, apply lotion, then saddle up to the one counter in the place to blow dry their hair, fuzzy pubic region and all bumping into the front of the countertop. And quite frankly, it's more than I care to see for an extended period of time. Are you so blind as to not notice the above unspoken rules of etiquette? Can't you be a little nicer in the morning and return a "Good Morning" with more than a flat stare?

So these two women are not loved by the rest of us but whatever. This morning they enter the locker room and one says to the other, "So what was THAT ABOUT? The three guys with raquetball bags didn't have to swipe in [upon entering the club you must swipe your membership card]. So I asked the girl at the desk, 'Why don't they have to swipe their cards?" and she replied, 'Because I know them.' So I said, 'Well, don't you know ME?' and she said, 'No, that's why you have to swipe your card.' What's THAT all about? Who's the owner? I'm going to have a chat with the owner about that girl. That's just ridiculous, what is there a double STANDARD here or something?"

Annoyed would be the perfect way to describe my reaction. For PITY'S SAKE, maybe if you were NICER to the girl at the front desk she'd remember you. And for a woman who wears tie-dye tshirts and doesn't shave her armpits (or much else for that matter) you really ought to relax a little. But thanks for the gossip fodder, it makes the mornings all the more interesting.

Link for Moms

I am not a mother but I know lots of folks who are, and so this blog is for them:
DotMoms

Link courtesy of Dooce.

Attack of the Peeps

Practical joke recipe:

• A few bored office workers
• drop ceilings
• hundreds of bamboo skewersand tape
• Hundreds of boxes of Peeps

This post is dedicated to GWomyn, who is the only person I can think of who'd be tempted to pluck a peep off the ceiling and eat it.

Oooh Snap!

Found this little gem over at rumandmonkey.com. A skewering of the typical LiveJournal blog entry. If you're going to write about your day, take a cue from Dooce or IzzlePfaff and make it funny.

New design?

I've been working on a new spring-ish design for this here blog but with the weather being like it has I just don't have that urge to update it. Twenty degree F weather will damper one's enthusiasm for spring-like things. I'm just excited to see the frozen grass rather than three month old snow. Baby steps, I suppose.

An Open Letter to Internet Users

To all those folks who received an iMac for Christmas from their well meaning children or cousins:

Stop. Please, enough with the email addresses like 'mikeysMom02132002@excite.com', or "jordys_aunt@hotmail.com', or 'iluvmybabybrian@home.com'. Just, spare me your Freudian laden problems that your email addresses proclaim to the online community. Can't you define yourself some other way than by your relationship to the newest generation in your family? I'm certain they are very cute, but aren't you a person too? Do you have any other qualities that can be used to formulate an email address? For example: catLuvr7890, machineheadrox, or even rocknrollmama. All those are better than using your relationship to the child in your life as an online moniker or email address.

Thanks

Btw, Ms. Swallows? you might want to consider changing your email address to something other than your last name@cox.net. Just a suggestion.

Best. Email. Evar.

Our phone and fax numbers changed 2 years ago !! Please tell your computer !

Will Do!

Thank You Lunch

This was served to the Good Drs. Eirich after they dropped off their old dining room chairs having exchanged them for newer rear-end supports. It's nice and easy and somewhat elegant, so serve it up the next time you have someone to thank.

Thank You Sandwiches

• Honey roasted ham, the best you can get your hands on, as much as you need for the number of people you're feeding. Since this is a THANK YOU lunch, be generous and figure at least 0.25 lbs per person.
• Gruyere or other swiss-like cheese. about 0.4 lbs.
• 1 pear, your choice, but keep it mild and firm. I used Anjou.
• Baby spinach. Get a bag, use a bit for the sandwiches and the rest for the salad.
• Sourdough bread, sliced.
• Optional: Mustard, your choice.
• A toaster oven or a broiler.

1. Slice the pear thinly, about 0.25" thick.
2. Lightly toast the bread.
3. Assemble sandwiches: Take 1 peice of toasted sourdough, pile on ham, then pears, then cheese.
4. Brown under broiler for about 1.5 minutes, keeping an eye on them so they don't burn. You want the cheese to melt but not brown too much.
5. Remove from oven, top with mustard and baby spinach if desired and the second slice of bread.
6. Cut in half and serve while warm.

Serve with the extra crispy kettle potato chips and a side salad of baby spinach, a light vinagrette dressing and a little onion. We poured a reisling but it was a little too sweet for the salty ham, maybe a sauvingon blanc for when the days get warmer.

LOTR: Just finish it already!

So I've been reading the LOTR trilogy again now having seen all three movies. Some purists (I'm looking at YOU TM) might lament that 'unfortunate' sequence of events. "OH, it's too bad you didn't read the books first, because the books are so much more vast than the movies!" &tc. Truth be told, the movies helped me get a grasp of the world as a whole. The books were so filled with directions I couldn't figure out where things were in relation to each other. The movie helped me get a sense of the world as Tolkien imagined it.

However I generally read books (for pleasure) the same way a starving man sits down to a prime rib dinner: quickly and without abandon. I swallow each page like a forkful of mashed potatoes and medium-rare steak, words dripping through my mind like gravy through the tines of a fork. I devour the words, page upon page turning and glossing over and pouring over the appendices when they appear in footnotes...

... and short on details sometimes. All those songs Mr. Tolkien undoubtedly spent lots of time crafting? Er, yeah, I kind of skipped over those. Tom Bombadill? Yeah, um, right. Geography of Middle Earth? Heavens. So I felt that I owed it to myself to reread the books and get all the juicy details, see how the movies deviated from the book, and delve further into the world.

From this second reading some of my original opinions on the story have changed. For example, I no longer though the sequence in the Barrowdowns and with Tom Bombadill to be irrelevant. However one opinion I held from the first reading has only been cemented with the second: Mr. Tolkien , while an amazingly gifted creator, was not a storyteller.

INFIDEL you cry. BLASPHEMER escapes your lips as you swoon. Well, I'm sorry, but I'm mired in the last 150 pages of the story, and it's so incredibly obvious that Tolkein just didn't know how to end the tale. I think the ending, specifically, the very last sentence in the book is fantastic, superb, perfect! But the whole winding down of the tale is excruciating. Excruciating suffering of the characters, excruciating detail of the landscape of Mordor, excruciating EVERYTHING. The bits I would have loved to have read more about were glossed over, like the romance of Eowyn and Faramir (don't get me started on Tolkein's handling of romance in this novel) or the coronation of Aragorn or Legolas and his yearning for the sea. Rather he seems to spend an inordinate amount of time describing the brackish water of the only stream in Mordor, the long thorns on the wretched bushes in the vales, the distance to Mt. Doom from where Sam and Frodo are and every single day spend it told in mind-numbing detail (wow, yet ANOTHER day where they crawl along the vale through thorns and bush and nothing happens.)

Much like a child who hedges and procrastinates washing up before going to bed, Mr. Tolkien holds tightly to the story by obsessing over trivial details and it drives me batty. Not so much the details themselves rather the sense that the story WILL NEVER END. I suppose that might be what he was going after, getting the reader to empathize with Frodo and his seemingly unending quest but I don't think that plopping the reader in such a predicament is the way to do it.

I'm not advocating for an editorial change to the books. I think they should stay exactly the way they are now. However, that doesn't mean that I can't look to the heavens every once in a while and wish for my own Star of Elendil to guide me out of the tale.

Redefine

Lux·u·ry - n. The ability to lay on the couch with a favorite drink and favorite book for an extended period of time.

&*$%@!

SUNNOFABEETCH

The tape they used to keep my blood from dousing everything within a 15 foot radius really pulls at that arm hair when I quickly and carelessly extend my arm in an attempt to remind my brain that my body doesn't consist only of ten moving phalanges and a butt. It'll be waxilicous fun when it comes time to peel this sucker off.

Hail, absquatulators!

I've been thinking alot about this blog and what you, dear readers, would be interested in reading about. Comment participation is low if existant at all so I thought I'd ask YOU what you like or dislike about this site and whether you'd want to engage each other in a conversation about it. What topics would you like to see more of? What would you like to see LESS of? More rants? Recipes? Personal tales of hand-searing? Borderline truthful accounts of everyday activities? Do you want the ability to comment on posts or could you really care less about them? Tell me what it is you like about the site, and I'll try to put MORE of that up here on a regular basis. You can put your suggestions in the comments on this post, or email them to me (Link is below on right hand side of page.)

I SO want a stuffed bacon!

I can't decide between the hammie or the 'mato.

Vote.

Today, I went to my polling place and I voted.

I don't mention this to sing my own praises, or pat myself on the back, or demonstrate some sort of intellectual elitism. I mention this because lately I've been thinking alot about what it means to live in a democracy such as ours (let's not get into the argument that it's really a republic, for now let me just use the democracy, okay? kthx. :^) as compared to Haiti, or Iraq, or Iran, or any of the countless other places in the world where the citizens are denied a voice in their own government, where they are exploited and used like a cheap tissue for the benefit of a chosen few. I am extremely thankful that I live in a part of the world where I can hear a presidential candidate speak without (much) fear of a bomb blowing the opposition to smithereens, where I can vote based on my own beliefs and opinions and not those of my husband, where my voice counts just as much as anybody else's.

I consider myself very lucky and implore the rest of the U.S. citizens reading this to go and vote when the time comes.

Logic will get you everywhere.

DJ Blurb's recent post reminds me of this particularly funny time when I was part of a caravan of cars that was pulled over on the University of Rochester campus.

We were heading out for a night of rock'n bowl at a local bowling alley. So we piled into two cars and headed across campus when our friend (Lan) behind us decided it would be funny to jump ahead. So he guns it and jumps into the opposite lane, pulls along side of us, stops at the stop sign at a crosswalk and waves, and peels out of there and jumps back into our lane, thus successfully jumping ahead of us on a two lane road.

Unfortunately for him, that car parked in the parking lot was not campus security, but a Rochester Police cruiser.

So the lights come on and this cop races down to Wilson Blvd. to catch us before we leave campus. The car I was in (piloted by FatBoy) pulled over to let the cop go by but to our astonishment he pulls over our friend's car! After what seemed to be a long time, the cop finally leaves the other car and walks back to ours. He taps on the window and FatBoy rolls it down.

Cop: "What are you guys waiting here for?"
FB: "Well sir you pulled over our friend."
Cop: "Oh? Where were you going?"
FB: "Bowling."
Cop: "Hm. Tell me, is your friend always an asshole, or is it just tonight?"
FB and me, without blinking an eye: "He's always an asshole, sir."
Cop: "*Smiles* That's what I thought."

Somehow Lan managed to talk his way out of the ticket by using his AMAZING POWERS OF REASONING. He told the officer, "Yes sir, I was in the opposite lane [facing oncoming traffic] but I DID stop at the stop sign."