Kevin Costner Juniors

In my last post I mentioned my Grandmother was a body guard when she was 11 years old. While I’ve been unable to locate her supervisor for comment, I’m confident she was a stellar brawns-woman mainly because I don’t think Tangle Foot killed my Great, Great Grandmother.

My Grandma’s aptitude got me wondering how great an 11 year old body guard would be in present day. Much to the chagrin of the inventors of Flintstone’s vitamins and Baby Einstein, today’s version of an 11 year old would make a shit, terrible body guard. They would be utterly unable to scan the perimeter for threats because of two flaws.

1.      They are too distracted.

 

2.      They have too much confidence.

 

Note: that's a real piece of "art" intended for a child's room.

Back in the day, a sign like this would never exist. Back then, a kid didn’t know if a wolf was going to eat their father or if their parents were going to give them up for adoption because they were running low on oatmeal. They constantly had to be on high alert and unconfident they’d be sleeping in their bed that night.

The reason kids are more distracted today is very obvious. But why do they have so much over confidence? I mean they personally have no source of continual income yet they assume their parents will just keep paying for their beds. I think this problem could be easily solved if you got your kid’s furniture from Rent-A-Center instead of buying it.  

Without the Rent-A-Center solution, the only thing an 11 year old would only be able to protect you from is losing in a Zach Efron trivia contest.

The Legend of Tangle Foot

My grandma recently told me the following story:

When I was 11, your great, great grandma took in a boarder who we called Tangle Foot because he had one of those tangled feet. One time he tried to strangle her so she started inviting me over to spend the night at her place for protection.

Observations:

 1.    Back in the day, child labor was so bad that 11 year olds were well qualified body guards.

2.    At no point does my grandma say that Tangle Foot was forced to move out after the attack.

3.    Back in the day, if you had an obvious physical deformity you could no longer be called by your birth name. Please enjoy this old timey re-enactment.

 

 

 

Late Night Confessions- Train Edition

I sat by Necklace Man on my ride home from work.


 He approached the woman who hates him and they had this exchange:

Necklace Man then went on to tell the following story:

The other day I encountered a woman on the train and I was taken by her odor. I grabbed her by the arm and said, "Ma'am, you smell like the most beautiful flower. You are like Sarah Palin. You literally dribble beauty."

The woman who hates him said, "I bet that lady thinks twice about riding the train again."

Unphased, Necklace Man went on to recap an interview with Jenny McCarthy that he watched.

Early Morning Confessions - TRAIN EDITION

There is a guy who rides the train with me every day. He looks like this.

 I’m not sure where he works but wherever it is must allow people to wear lots of necklaces.

There is this woman he always insists on sitting next to. She looks like this.

She always looks as though someone insulted her homemade lasagna. 

The man likes to talk about when he was a teenager. He’s like the Bruce Springsteen of talking.

The woman’s hatred for this man is clear to everyone except him. Every day he tells a story that she doesn’t care about. This morning he told this one:

It was spring of 1959 and I was in St. Louis visiting Sharon, a woman who had breasts that cascaded like waterfalls. Anyway we became very close. I recently saw her and it turns out she has a daughter who was born in December of 1959. I asked who her father was and she said she didn’t know. Makes you wonder... Also she has her mother’s cascading breasts; they are like waterfalls.

Sometimes he doesn’t have stories like that. Instead he just provides scene-by-scene descriptions of episodes of The Honeymooners.

Running Away from America

Dear Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Nevada, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Virginia, West Virginia, Wisconsin, Wyoming:

You should definitely secede from the union because running away from home always results in the best possible outcome. Think of your childhood and all the times you ran away from home and ended up being totally right.

Just as you were right then, you are right now. I mean think of all the documentaries that bode well for a runaway’s success.  Case and point: The movie Homeward Bound: The Incredible Journey. Those dogs ran away from home (or something (who knows (I mean who can remember))) and they ended up being adorable and sounding like Michael J Fox.   Whereas in the movie Home Alone, the boy stays home and two pedophiles break into his house. Staying a part of the union will result in two pedophiles breaking into your states on freaking Christmas. Is anything sacred anymore?

Secession should be easy. Sure you don’t have a “plan” or “currency” but you have an electronic petition which means you have electricity and really what more do you need in this day and age? I mean, you have little else already and you’re getting by. Plus, once you aren’t American think of all the money you’ll make off of American tourism, especially you, Arkansas!  

In closing I’d like to wish you good luck in your efforts. You represent what America is all about.

 

Election Results

So far I've gone the entire day without learning the election results. I'm confident I can go at least a month without finding out who the president is. It won't be easy. I imagine I'll get hungry, probably in the morning, in the afternoon, and again at night. I bet I'll get tired too, likely at the end of the day or when this one guy at work is talking. Lastly, I'll definitely need to watch Alaska Ice Cold Killers and Red Neck Rehab just to make sure I stay up-to-speed on current events without fear of exposing myself to election results.

It won't be easy, but I'll persevere.

Election Day!

If I were a presidential candidate my only platform would be that there are too many movies about surfing. By voting for me you’d confirm that you agree there are too many movies about surfing. If you don’t vote for me you’re clearly in support of more movies about surfing, and you want your children to live in world where they have to endure previews of movies where someone’s life is first negatively then positively impacted by waves. In sum, you want your children to be idiots.

Seriously who likes movies about surfing? Who thinks there aren’t already enough of them? What water based tale remains to be told? I can’t even imagine how stupid the script for a surfing movie is.

Scene I

Jeff runs out into the ocean with his surfboard. He catches a wave and rides it into the shore.

Scene II

Jeff runs out into the ocean with his surfboard. He catches a wave and rides it into the shore.

Scene III

Jeff runs out into the ocean with his surfboard. He catches a wave and rides it into the shore.

FAST FORWARDING…

Scene XXXXXIIIII

Jeff runs out into the ocean with his surfboard. He catches a wave and rides it into the shore.

FIN

Now I must admit that I’ve never actually seen a movie about surfing but I guarantee you I can guess there is no surfing based plot line that cannot be solved by having the protagonist simply stop surfing.

Plot line 1

Solution = Stop surfing

Plot line 2

 

 

Solution = Stop surfing

Plot line 3

 

Solution = Stop surfing and get a job at Arby’s like the rest of us

That’s it. There are no other possible plot lines for a surfing movie. I mean, what else could possibly happen while surfing?

I’m not saying surfing isn’t fun, I’m just saying who cares. Even a movie about rock climbing is more interesting because at least with that if shit goes wrong you fall into a crevice and HILARITY ensues. With surfing, if shit goes wrong you end up back on land , crushing a sand castle or one of those sand dragon things. Basically, when you fail at surfing you can walk home.

So this election, don't worry about voting for Obama or Romney. Just vote NO to whatever local amendment is being proposed and pretend you voted NO to surfing. Then go home, take a long hard look in the mirror and know you are now a perfect citizen... who just voted no to raising teacher salaries.

Following

I was on hold waiting to make a doctor's appointment and a man's voice overpowered the jazzy hold music telling me follow my hospital on Twitter. Ummm. YES PLEASE. Of course I want to read a hospital's microblog. My only concern is that all other things in my life will seem boring in comparison to a building's.

Book Report

When I was in the second grade I borrowed The Diary of Anne Frank from my school's library because I had not yet understood that there were books that didn’t make sense for children to read. I had been inundated with campaign after campaign encouraging children to "book it." Their colorful propaganda failed to mention that not all books were about raccoons and helpful maids.

It was a total fluke that I understood every word in the title because that Anne Frank character lost me in chapter one. There were so many proper nouns that I had never encountered so I was completely incapable of following the story. Naturally I raised my hand and asked, "What's a Hilter?" And like all non-enabling adults, Mrs. M said, "Look it up in the dictionary."

I was used to this routine. When I asked how to spell a word as a child, nine out of ten times I was told to look in the dictionary. News flash, adults, you need to know how to spell something to look it up in the dictionary. My typical response was to augment reality towards situations I could spell.

This time was different because I had Hitler spelled out for me on the page and could easily look it up. Funny thing about the dictionary I had though… it was meant for 2nd graders so aside from the fact proper nouns are usually absent, Hilter wasn't exactly explained in print yet.

Unsatisfied and about to give up, I decided that I would employ the tactic of thumbing my way to the end of the book and reading the last sentence. Upon arriving at the end I noticed that this particular addition had pictures, black and white shots of Anne Frank, her family, and Nazi soldiers. My book report just became way more doable!

Ancestry.mom What Were You Thinking?

On paper Ancestry.com is all sorts of fun. In practice, things can be soul shattering.

Hair Du Jour

I think you can predict  how good a waitress will be based on her hair. If she put effort in it, she’ll be good. If not, you're SOL. I mean, if she can’t even take the time to make her own head look nice then she doesn’t give a shit about your soup.

On Seeing Chibs from SOA

I recently found myself uncertain of which direction to go while hiking near the Hollywood sign. A man helped me.

Here is a recap of our conversation, written 1 minute after the encounter:

A man approached, I asked him for guidance. As he answered I noticed it was Chibs from Sons of Anarchy. He simply stated, “It’s that way, a bit of a hike.” He then turned away and continued on his journey. I never acknowledged I recognized him.

Here is a recap of our conversation written 3 minutes after the encounter:

A man approached, I asked him for guidance. As he answered I noticed it was Chibs from Sons of Anarchy. He simply stated, “It’s that way, a bit of a hike.” He then turned away and continued on his journey. I never acknowledged I recognized him, but sensed him watching us march off into the distance. As I turned to look back his way, I saw him standing, with an outstretched hand, reaching for us and a single tear rolling down his right cheek. He whispered “I’ll never forget you.”

Here is a recap of our conversation written 6 minutes after the encounter:

A man approached, I asked him for guidance. As he answered I noticed it was Chibs from Sons of Anarchy. He simply stated, “It’s that way, a bit of a hike.” He then turned away and continued on his journey. I never acknowledged I recognized him, but sensed him watching us march off into the distance. As I turned to look back his way, I saw him standing, with an outstretched hand, reaching for us and a single tear rolling down his right cheek. He whispered “I’ll never forget you.” A second tear began rolling down his face, miraculously healing the scar on his right cheek*.

Here is a recap of our conversation written 9 minutes after the encounter:

A man approached, I asked him for guidance. As he answered I noticed it was Chibs from Sons of Anarchy. He simply stated, “It’s that way, a bit of a hike.” He then turned away and continued on his journey. I never acknowledged I recognized him, but sensed him watching us march off into the distance. As I turned to look back his way, I saw him standing, with an outstretched hand, reaching for us and a single tear rolling down his right cheek. He whispered “I’ll never forget you.” A second tear began rolling down his face, miraculously healing the scar on his right cheek. I curtsied Chibs farewell and continued on my hike. As I neared the top of the path I noticed a plaque affixed to the side of the hill. It read:

Hey, Rachel. It's me. Just checking in. Hope you're enjoying your hike. Have a great day.

-Chibs

P.S. I don't know how to put this but you actually ended up getting murdered on the way up. But being Chibs I worked diligently to solve your murder and went back and time to prevent the perpetrator's birth thereby saving your life. You should be all set.

 *Thanks, Matt.

Monkey v. Kid

The gap between kids and monkeys is shrinking every damn day. Whose fault is it? All of ours. Why did we idly sit by while NASA trained monkeys for space travel? Its all fun in game until a space monkey shits in a Verizon satellite and I temporarily lose my ability to be a mayor of a tiny, fake town.

Monkeys are getting smarter, but that's only half the problem. Now, I'm not going to say that kids today are getting dumber but I will say they need to get their shit together fast. Case and point, I recently saw a kid standing outside a grade school, eating blue cotton candy out of a jewel bag. As I approached we had the following exchange:

He opened the door and disappeared into the corridor. I’ve never seen someone put such little effort into figuring out how to enter a building. A monkey would never be in that situation because monkeys are set up to succeed. We don't ask them to leave their cage, but if we do, we train them to act along side Matt LeBlanc in award winning movies. Why aren't we demanding that same level of education for our children, America?