Monthly Archives: May 2016

Green Eggs And Ham: The Election Year Remix

dr-seuss-characters-clip-art-784089Here’s what happens when you get a call from a very persistent political pollster while you’re trying to read Green Eggs And Ham to your godchild:

Who will you vote for, Clinton or Trump?

Politics has hit a slump.
I do not like Clinton or Trump;
I could not be that big a chump.

Would you like Trump’s giant wall?
What if Mexico paid for it all?

I would not like Trump’s giant wall.
I would not like that wall at all.

What about Clinton on college tuition?
Her plan will only cost $350 billion.

I do not like her on college tuition.
I do not have $350 billion.

Do you like them in the polls?
Do you like their policy goals?
Do you like them on Facebook and Twitter?
Do their half-truths make you bitter?

I do not like them in the polls;
I do not think that they have souls.
I do not like Clinton or Trump.
I could not be that big a chump.

What if Clinton found those emails?
Would you like to know the details?

I do not think she lost those emails;
WikiLeaks already has the details.

Would you like them in the White House?food-green-eggs-300px
Would you like them in a courthouse?
Do you think she’s guilty of treason?
Do you think he’s abandoned reason?

I would not like them in the White House.
I’d only like them in an outhouse.
I do not like Clinton or Trump;
I could not be that big a chump.

Would you like them in a sketch on Late Night?
Would you like them in a fistfight?
Would you vote for them on The Voice?
Pick Trump! Pick Clinton! There’s no other choice.

I would not like them in a sketch on Late Night,
not even if they promise to fistfight.
Where did the third party candidates go?
Tell me! Tell me! I need to know.

Would you, could you, pay more tax?
Would you, could you, trust their facts?

I should not have to pay more tax.
I laugh at those who trust their facts.

Would you, could you, with Sarah Palin?
Would you, could you, with Liz Warren?

No way, no day with Sarah Palin.
I’m kind of afraid of Elizabeth Warren.

In the fall! In the fall!
Would you, could you, in the fall?

I would not, could not, in the fall.
I will not vote for them at all.

dr-seuss-clipart-sam_i_amI should not have to pay more tax,
I would not, could not, trust their facts.
Not with Sarah Palin,
Not with Liz Warren.
Not in the fall,
Not at all.

I do not like Clinton or Trump;
I want to take them to the dump.
They’ve turned me into such a grump.
Please, someone bust this political slump!

[all images are in the public domain]

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My Granddad And The Summer Of The Flying Bears

359px-The_Favorite_by_Georgios_Iakovidis

The Favorite (Georgios Jakobides); image in the public domain

When I was little, I spent most of my summers at my granddad’s house, and my favorite part of spending time with my granddad was listening to his stories.  He would never say a word until I’d finished my chores, and I used to hurry so fast through all the scrubbing and dishwashing that my grandma said I should come with my own caution sign because the floor around me was always wet.  But I just wanted to hear the stories.

He didn’t tell his stories to just anybody, either.  People would come by the house and ask about this story or that one, and mostly my granddad would answer them, but sometimes he didn’t.  When I asked him about it, he said he didn’t mind telling a story just to pass the time, but talking to a person who’d already made up his mind not to believe you was just plain dumb.  I was still young enough that I didn’t understand what he meant, but looking back, I guess he wasn’t wrong.

The summers I stayed with my grandparents, if I wasn’t begging my granddad for a story, I was begging him to let me play with the flying bears.  I’ve never heard of any other place in the world where the bears could fly, but where my granddad lived, you almost couldn’t get them to stop.  It got to be a problem after they built an airport near the town; pilots would look up to see a bear in the sky ahead of them banking left, and they’d be so busy staring at the bear that they’d steer off course and end up halfway to the next state before they thought to look at the controls again.  Of course, these days all the controls are automatic, so that isn’t a problem anymore.

The flying bears loved hearing my granddad’s stories as much as I did, and it was a rare night when we didn’t see at least one bear touch down in the garden.  It just about drove my poor grandma crazy because they’d always land in the vegetable patch and trample the vegetables, and she couldn’t get anything to grow there until my granddad built a little landing strip for the bears in the field out back.  Even then she’d still mutter about paw marks on her linoleum, but I saw her putting out a bowl of acorns and pine nuts once or twice when she thought no one was looking.

I used to play with the cubs while the grownup bears visited with my granddad.  I don’t know how many times I got told to stay on the ground, but you can’t expect a child not to ride on the back of a flying bear cub and do barrel rolls just above the treetops when the chance is right in front of her.  We used to fly way up near the stars, and I would tell the cubs all the stories my granddad told me about the constellations and what they meant.  The cubs tried to teach me how to sing bear-song a few times, but I don’t think I ever got it quite right.

I asked my granddad once how the bears learned to fly, because the cubs said it just sort of happened, like walking or swimming.  My granddad told me that, back when he was young, the bears couldn’t fly at all.  One day, though, a bear cub climbed almost to the top of a tree when the branch he was standing on started to creak, and he realized the branches that high up were too small to hold him.  The cub got scared and couldn’t climb down, and his mama couldn’t climb up after him because she was too heavy and the branches would break.  None of the bears knew what to do.

The branch kept creaking and the bear cub kept crying until his poor mama was half out of her mind.   Finally she couldn’t take any more, and she reared up on her hind legs and jumped as high as she could toward her cub.  Instead of falling back to the ground like all the other bears thought she would, though, she just kept going higher and higher.  She flew all the way up the tree until she was high enough to grab her cub just as the branch he was standing on snapped through, and if her landing was a little clumsy, well, no one thought any the worse of her for it.

My granddad got that story from the mama bear herself, though she never shared it with another human being.  She told my granddad that she wasn’t scared at all on the way up, but the whole time she was flying back down, she was convinced the wind was blowing off all her fur and she was going to crash to the ground as bald as a baby field mouse.  She didn’t, of course, and by the time a week had passed nearly all the bears could fly, except for the very old and the very, very young.

(When I asked the mama bear why she told that story to my granddad and nobody else, she said it was because, after she got her cub down from the tree, she took the cub to my granddad to have him fix up some scrapes and cuts, and somehow she found herself telling him everything.  I used to go to my granddad with my scrapes and cuts, too, so I understood.)

I got a little older and started going to a different school during the rest of the year.  It was a very good school, where they made us wear uniforms and tested us on things we hadn’t learned yet, but the teachers there weren’t very nice.  At my old school, my teacher told me he always looked forward to reading my essays about what I’d done over the summer, so the bears and I made sure to do things my teacher would enjoy reading about when classes started up again.  I used to save the essays and read them to my granddad when he stayed with us during the holidays, and he liked them, too, and said he guessed my teacher must be pretty smart.

At this new place, when I wrote my summer essay, my new teacher made me stay after class and lectured me about how stories have no place in works of serious nonfiction.  I tried to explain about the mama bear and her cub, but my teacher said everybody knew bears couldn’t fly, and then she told me it was time I grew up and made me write a new essay where I copied out the encyclopedia entry on bears.  When I got to the end and found out that my teacher was right and bears couldn’t fly, I felt just like that cub did when he climbed too high in the tree, except the mama bear couldn’t rescue me because everybody knows bears can’t fly.

My parents didn’t understand why I was so unhappy that fall at my new school, and I never told them.  I didn’t want them to know how childish I’d been.  The next time my granddad came for the holidays, he asked to hear my essay and I gave him the copied-out encyclopedia entry.  He read it all the way through, frowned at the paper, and then frowned at me until I told him the whole story.  When I finished, he frowned at the paper again and threw it into the fire.  I asked him if it was true that everyone knows bears can’t fly.  He said, “Of course everyone knows bears can’t fly.  But the bears don’t know it, and don’t you go telling them.”  And I felt better.

My granddad passed away not long after that, and it wasn’t more than a few days after his funeral that the bears flew for what turned out to be the last time.  Before then, I’d never seen more than two or three in the air together, but that day so many bears took to the sky at once that they blocked the sun and turned the town almost as dark as midnight, though the clocks said it was 12 noon.  In every home and office and store, people stopped what they were doing and went outside to watch the flying bears.  We all knew they were telling us goodbye.

I was staying with my grandma when it happened.  I saw the bears as they skimmed over buildings, circled once above the graveyard, and then flew in a long, slow procession over my grandparent’s house.  I saw all the young cubs I’d played with, now almost grown and looking far too dignified ever to have done barrel rolls.  The bears flew down to skim low over the landing strip behind the house, but never landed, instead climbing higher and higher until it became impossible to tell one bear from another.  Then they turned toward the west and flew out of sight, and none of them ever came back.

I haven’t seen another flying bear since that day.  I haven’t even been to the town in years.  We sold the house after my grandma died and I never had a reason to go back after that.  To own the truth, I don’t much want to go back.  I don’t want to see how things have changed since the summers I spent there as a child, and I don’t want to know what the town looks like without my granddad somewhere in it, telling his stories.  If I go back now, I’m not sure I could still believe that bears ever flew there at all.  Some days I know they never did.

But the bears don’t know it, and I’m not about to tell them.

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The Friend Card

batman-312342_640Among any group of really good friends, you will always find some version of the Friend Card.  The Friend Card is sort of like the Bat Signal; you can only use it in an emergency, but when you do, your friends have to drop what they’re doing, get in their bat-mobiles, and come help you however they can.  They don’t have to show up in a superhero costume (although bonus points if they do), but they do have to show up.

Not all Friend Card-worthy emergencies are harrowing tales of woe, of course.  A lot of them are the kind you eventually end up laughing about. For me, the memories of times I’ve played the Friend Card have turned into some of my favorite stories to tell.  For instance, there was the time I went on a date and had to have a friend come to the restaurant to rescue me:

The Time I Went On A Date And Had To Have A Friend Come Rescue Me

It’s not that the date went badly, it’s that I’d worn an old pair of pants that split down the back seam halfway through the night. Yes, it was hilarious.  Are you done laughing yet?  Okay, how about now?  Good.  So, in the Not Great column, I was in a crowded restaurant with my “Kiss Me, I’m Irish” underwear on full display (stop judging me).  In the Could Be Worse column, I was in the ladies’ room when it happened, which I’ve always taken as proof that God is a chick.

After I got done freaking out, I called a girlfriend who was about my size, invoked the Friend Card, and skulked in a stall until she could bring me some pants that didn’t violate public decency laws.  It took a comparative eon and a few months off my life, but my friend finally got to the restaurant and headed discreetly to the bathroom, where she handed me a nice pair of her own pants to change into and then immediately left so I could continue my date.  She even snuck my ripped pants out with her so my date wouldn’t see them—star power!

The rest of the night went very well, and I’m ashamed to say that my friend’s pants got pretty badly wrinkled by the time I returned them the next day.  No, that’s not true.  I’m actually not ashamed at all.  So, under the circumstances, I think that was a solid use of the Friend Card and a fine performance by my friend.  She still makes fun of me for it, but she gets to because she came through in the clutch.  And because I wrinkled her pants.

Then, of course, there’s the time I decided it was a good idea to skip the salon and bleach my hair at home:

The Time I Decided It Was A Good Idea To Skip The Salon And Bleach My Hair At Home

I was trying to save money, and I’d thoroughly researched home hair bleaching techniques on the internet.  With what I now realize was undue faith in YouTube tutorials, I followed the instructions exactly, settled myself by an open window, and tried to ignore the way my scalp had caught fire.  When it was time to check under the hood, so to speak, I looked in the bathroom mirror and omigod my hair is orange panic panic panic ask google what to do—

black-1299077_640I followed my Google search result’s instructions for mixing and applying a violet-colored toner to cancel out the (pumpkin freaking orange) brassiness, though with a little less faith than I’d had in the YouTube tutorials from the previous step.  I washed out the toner, looked in the bathroom mirror and omigod my hair is purple panic panic panic why does the internet hate me panic panic just shave it all off and buy a wig–

Before I went completely V for Vendetta, I figured I might as well try playing the Friend Card.  To set the scene, this was 5:40 on a Sunday evening and the stores all closed at 6:00.  My friend took me to the drugstore, said nothing about the three scarves I had wound around my head, and calmed me down long enough to grab some hair dye in a fetching shade of normal.  It worked thank you sweet baby jesus i’ll never bleach my own hair again and, although my hair was basically straw for the next two months, it was straw of a normal color.  I’m calling that a win.

Of course, I’ve also been the one upon whom the Friend Card was played, and I think I’ve come through pretty well when it was my turn.  I mean, not everyone would be willing to pry the nails out of a coffin-sized wooden box her friend found in the basement of her new house and open it up to see if there’s a body inside:

The Time I Pried The Nails Out Of A Coffin-Sized Wooden Box My Friend Found In Her Basement And Opened It To See If There Was A Body Inside

The problem with living in a big city is that, when you move into your new home and find a large wooden box nailed shut and stowed in a dark corner of the basement and you call the police because the box is just the right size to contain a body, they tell you to open it yourself and not to call back unless the box turns out to, in fact, contain a body.  My friend learned this the hard way.  She couldn’t bring herself to open the box, though, so she friend-carded me— and then I got to learn it the hard way, too.

My friend had tried her best to work up enough courage to open the box on her own. However, in a case of what turned out to be monumentally poor planning, we had just celebrated her last night in her old house with a horror movie marathon that included Nosferatu.  After several hours of staring at the creepy mystery box and clutching a hammer that she was more ready to use as a weapon than as a tool, my friend finally caved and called me to come over and open it for her.  By then, it was closing in on midnight.

Of course I came over, and I brought a crucifix, some garlic, a wooden stake, and my neighbor’s handgun (just in case).  The wooden stake was really just one of my mixing spoons held the wrong way round and the garlic was the kind you buy in a jar, but I hadn’t had much notice.  As I pried out the last nail, I wondered if this was the point in the movie when the entire audience starts yelling “Don’t do it!  Just run!” and then I shoved off the lid before I could chicken out.  My friend, who by this time had turned mint green, stood ready with the mixing spoon as I looked into the box to find….

potatoes-1183623_640Potatoes.  Dozens and dozens of potatoes.  Turns out the house’s previous owner liked to buy them in bulk and store them in the basement in a creepy wooden box because apparently that makes them “keep” longer.  He’d meant to take the box with him when he moved, which is why he nailed it shut, but that corner of the basement was badly lit and he didn’t see the box during his final walk-through.  Still, I didn’t know that when I looked inside, so I totally get the Friend Card win on this one.

Everyone has played the Friend Card, and everyone has had the Friend Card played on them, and I’ve never heard of someone not coming through.  In my opinion, it’s one of the better qualities of the human race, right up there with empathy, imagination, and the inability to throw out your kid’s crappy handmade presents.  It gives me hope.

And to those of you who like to store your starchy tubers in giant scary coffins in the basement:  LABEL . YOUR . BOXES!  Seriously, who does that?  Potatoes.  Good grief.

 

[all images are in the public domain via pixabay.com]

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Johnny Depp Tarot

When I was a kid, I liked to play with tarot cards.  Sometimes I tried to do serious readings, but most of the time I’d just make up stories to go with the pretty pictures, which it turns out is more or less what you’re supposed to do in a serious reading anyway.  Then the nuns found me telling a boy’s fortune under the bleachers one fine afternoon, and my tarot cards met what I later learned was a fiery end.  Shame.  I’d paid full price for them.

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image in public domain via pixabay.com

That’s not what this blog post is about, however.  Despite all the holy hand-wringing over what I’m told was the Devil’s influence, I never lost my liking for making up fortunes based on pretty pictures.  I just learned to be more careful about what pictures I used.  For example, carrying around photos of cute celebrities also got me in trouble with the nuns, but it was the afterschool special kind of trouble where the grownups talk at you in understanding voices and tell you that you’re a special flower just waiting to bloom.  So, being possessed of a logical mind and absolutely no scruples, I stopped carrying around regular tarot cards and instead told the future using pictures of Johnny Depp.

In addition to being much easier to explain if discovered, the Johnny Depp tarot deck has the virtue of evolving along with the actor’s career.  When I first started doing this, over half the deck was represented by images of Edward Scissorhands (he’s still most of the suite of Swords, but that’s only to be expected).  I don’t do many readings these days, but I still indulge from time to time, and I thought I’d share the results of my most recent foray into fortune-telling.  It was for myself a friend, and my her question for the cards was, what should I my friend do about this cute guy who was flirting with me her the other day?  These are the answers the JD Tarot revealed:

First Card (represents the questioner’s current situation):  The Pirate

Embed from Getty Images

 

This card represents an unexpected opportunity, usually one that is both attractive and risky.  A handsome rogue has captured your attention and now you feel like you can’t breathe.  Your life, previously so tightly laced, now seems full of intrigue and adventure.  You’re interested, but you suspect he desires only a night of plunder.  He may dance and sing with you while the rum lasts, but will he set his sights on another horizon when he feels a change in the wind?  If you follow “The Pirate”, you may find the treasure you seek, but be aware that what you get might not be what you truly value.

Second Card (represents obstacles in the questioner’s path):  The Mad Hatter

Embed from Getty Images

 

This card represents what is not as crazy as it seems.  The handsome rogue currently using your heart for a mainsail met you at the bar on Karaoke Night.  His first impression of you is of when, after your fourth Long Island Iced Tea, you lurched onstage and gave a remarkably accurate—if slurred—rendition of “Sweet Transvestite.”  And, yes, you danced.  The entire bar thought you’d gone bat-poo.  Fortunately you can stay on key even while plastered, you managed not to fall off the stage, and it turns out that your guy is a fan of Rocky Horror Picture Show (as, luckily, was the bouncer). This obstacle is not as bad as you think.

 Third Card (represents advice for the questioner):  The Man Himself

Embed from Getty Images

 

This card represents what is definitely as crazy as it seems—crazy awesome!  This guy flirted with you after you’d channeled Dr. Frankenfurter in front of a hundred strangers.  He already knows you’re bat-poo.  The Johnny Depp Tarot advises:  steer into the skid.  Show him your collection of Pixies memorabilia.  Tell him about the dream you had that was basically When Harry Met Sally, except it was When Bigfoot Met Sasquatch.  Play Strip Pictionary.  Be the inimitable, incomprehensible pile of awesome you are.  Just, maybe don’t show him the blog right away.  There are limits, after all.

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Grapefruit Juice: Even God Hates It

juice-73768_640My doctor ordered me to drink a glass of grapefruit juice every day.  Sure, I could just pretend I’m doing what he told me to do but actually keep drinking Sunny D.  Aside from my fear of turning orange from the beta carotene, though (and, yes, that happened.  To someone else, totally not me), I’m also terrified of my doctor.  He was in the army when he was younger, and he gets this look in his eyes from time to time that makes me think he didn’t serve in a medical capacity.  So now I drink a glass of grapefruit juice every day.

This raises a problem that I can’t ignore, however, and it’s not that I’m more scared of my doctor than I am of finding out that Johnny Depp hates my blog.  My fear of my doctor is probably the healthiest thing about me.  The problem is that I hate grapefruit juice.  I hate it with the burning, white-hot heat of a thousand suns.  For those of you who’ve seen the movie Clue, which I highly recommend by the way, my feelings for grapefruit juice make me think of Madeline Kahn’s character saying “I hated her SO… much… it… it… the… it… the… flames… flames… on the side of my face… breathing… breathless… heaving breaths…”  That’s exactly what it’s like for me, except that I haven’t murdered my grapefruit juice in the study with a candlestick (mostly because I can’t figure out how).

Grapefruit juice hates me back, incidentally.  I’m staring at a glass of it right now, one I tried to make more appealing by serving it over ice in a fancy wine glass and throwing in some grapes and a couple of cherries.  Every time I do that, though, I eat the grapes and cherries first; then I put in some more grapes and cherries, and then I eat those; then I let the ice melt; then I put the glass somewhere I can’t see it so I won’t feel guilty while I do pretty much anything else; then I sullenly unearth the glass, pinch my nose, and drink the juice.  Then I tell the remaining citric effluvia how awful it is, with references to reality television and Fifty Shades of Grey.  It’s hardly surprising that the juice resents this a little bit, especially given what happens about an hour after I drink it.

non-judgment-801268_640 2My motto has always been, drink a glass of grapefruit juice first thing in the morning and nothing worse can happen to you for the rest of the day.  I’ve lived by that motto for years, starting every morning by not drinking a glass of grapefruit juice right after I get out of bed, no exceptions, no matter what.  Then, when bad things happen during the day, I’ll think, “At least I didn’t have to drink a glass of grapefruit juice this morning,” and it all seems a little easier.  It’s been a touchstone of my adulthood, a way to know if I’m headed in the right direction.  When I don’t know what path to choose, I ask myself, “If I take this road, am I more or less likely to end up drinking grapefruit juice?”  It’s the reason I didn’t major in Business.  It’s why I broke up with the guy who wore suits on weekends.  My hatred for grapefruit juice is essential to who I am.

I tried to explain this to my doctor so he would understand that telling me to drink grapefruit juice really means ordering me to contravene the dictates of my soul, and could he truly want such a thing?  That’s when he got that look in his eyes and said something I won’t quote directly because I like you and I don’t want to scare you, but the gist was this:  “Sometimes in life, we all have to do things we hate—things we can’t forget, things we still see when we close our eyes, things that will stay with us even as we lie in the sweet embrace of Death.”  He kept twisting the cord of his stethoscope as he said it, too.  I’m not saying that has any significance, it’s just the kind of thing you notice.

So now I have a new motto:  Do what your doctor says unless you want to gaze upon the ruins of your life and weep bitter, pink, grapefruity tears.  And then publish a blog post about it and nothing worse will happen to you for the rest of the day!  I hope.  I mean, what are the odds that my doctor reads this blog, right?

 

[all images are in the public domain via pixabay, with modification]

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My Cat Is A Furby

My cat makes a lot of the same sounds I do.  I squeak a little when I’m surprised or happy or in a funny position; so does she.  I grumble unintelligibly when I don’t feel like getting out of bed; so does she, and usually at the same time I do because she likes to sleep on my face.  I make rude noises at my computer when it freezes up; she makes the same rude noises at her toys when they go under the refrigerator and she can’t reach them.  It’s cute.  Or is it?

I was all set to write a post on how adorable it is that my cat imitates me.  It’s been ages since I wrote a feline-centric post, and I’ve been getting warning letters from the internet that I may be forced offline if I’m deemed “hostile to catz.”  But then I remembered my furby-974922_64012 3old furby–the one that started out irresistibly cute but turned out to be possessed by a demon, giving evil laughs in the middle of the night and spouting some kind of satanic smack talk even after I took out the batteries.  I started thinking about this because, before it became the phat new crib of an infernal being, my furby had started imitating me in a very similar manner.  Since that’s sort of the point of a furby, it still came as a surprise when mine dropped the cute act and revealed its true nature as a conduit for the Evil One.  Now that I can read the portents, though, I have to wonder:  can my cat be far behind?

Now, I don’t think my cat has gone full-on Linda Blair just yet, but she’s making a lot of the same sounds that my furby made in the time leading up to its possession.  In addition to imitating me, she also chitters, chirps, trills, and burps, and she makes this bizarre mechanical-sounding growl when I do hateful human things to her such as clipping her claws.  Like a furby, she’ll eat all the food you’re willing to give her and then immediately throw it back up.  Also like a furby, you can wake her up by flipping her upside down (though in fairness, that also wakes me up).  When she sits a certain way she even looks like a furby:  big ears, furry tail, indifference to all other beings.  A nervous human might start to worry.

cat-882049_640I wasn’t worried.  That’s how cats are, and my cat is Siamese and therefore never shuts up no matter who she sounds like.  Making all those strange noises doesn’t mean that she’s a furby, let alone a possessed furby.  Her impersonations are also not exclusively of me.  She does a very good imitation of my alarm clock when she wants to get my attention:  she yowls at an ungodly volume over and over and over until I want to throw her across the room.  This doesn’t mean that my cat is a furby, it just means that I wish my cat came with a snooze button.  She also has no off switch that I’ve been able to locate, just like with a…well, just like with a furby….

I did a little research on the subject, purely out of idle curiosity.  The fact that my once-affectionate lap kitty has taken to sitting in front of me and staring at me for thirty-minute stretches during which she neither moves nor blinks was not a motivating factor.  My research on furbies, much like most of my visits to WebMD, yielded grim results.  Common symptoms of furbitis (highly contagious, very aggressive, no known treatment) include:

  • personality changes that occur when its human forgets to feed it, pulls its tail once too often, or doesn’t pet it enough to make quota
  • talking at you in its own language (which it clearly expects you to understand) regardless of whether you are currently talking to someone else, studying for the MCAT, or even in the room
  • erratic movements with no apparent cause and serving no discernable purpose
  • staring at you with big, glowy eyes while you’re trying to sleep
  • being so adorable that you instantly fall in love with it and take it home, only to start wondering within three days if leaving it on a random doorstep, ringing the doorbell, and running like hell would make you a bad person

Looking at all the evidence, I can only conclude that my cat is indeed a Furby.  On the one hand, the realization is almost welcome.  It explains so much:  the bizarre behavior, the occasional clicking noises, why she doesn’t seem to understand that her tail is attached to her body.  On the other hand, it’s a well-documented fact that furbies are the devil’s familiars and conspire to bring about the downfall of humanity.  But my cat loves me!  She would never do anything to harm me.  She’s so comfortable with me that she sleeps on my face, right over my nose and mouth and…oh, no.

cat-1288972_640 1Screw it.  I’m not getting rid of my cat, even if she is a furby inhabited by Pazuzu that tries to smother me in my sleep.  I’ll still scratch that spot on the top of her head, I’ll still buy baby food as a cat treat and joke that she likes it because she thinks it’s really ground-up baby and that joke suddenly seems much less funny, and I’ll still let her sleep on my face.  She’s my cat and I’m her human.  Pazuzu the Demon King will just have to deal.

 

[all images are in the public domain via pixabay.com]

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Where The Wild Blogs Are

(For the Sendak-deprived, this is a play on Where The Wild Things Are.)

The night the Little Blind Girl changed her avatar and made mischief of one kind

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and another

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her followers called her “WILD BLOG!”
and the Little Blind Girl said “ I’LL FILTER YOUR CONTENT!”
so she was made to sign out without checking her statistics.

That very night in the Little Blind Girl’s computer the social media grew

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and grew-

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and grew until her smartphone chimed with tweets
and her Pinterest Board pinned the world all around

and Tumblr scrolled by with a private blog for the Little Blind Girl
and she clicked through the pages and gifs
and in and out of memes

and almost over the cat videos

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to where the wild blogs are.

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And when she came to the place where the wild blogs are
they roared their anonymous roars and gnashed their anonymous teeth
and rolled their anonymous eyes and showed their anonymous claws

til the Little Blind Girl wrote “LMAO!”
and tamed them with the magic trick
of standing up to all the trolls without taking their bait once

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and they were frightened and called her the most wild blog of all
and made her king of all wild blogs.

“And now,” tweeted the Little Blind Girl, “let the wild blog-rumpus start!”

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“Now stop!” the Little Blind Girl tweeted and made the wild blogs sign out without checking their statistics. And the Little Blind Girl, the king of all wild blogs, was lonely and wanted to be where someone loved her writing best of all.

Then all around from away across the blogosphere
she sensed good things to read
so she gave up being king of where the wild blogs are.

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But the wild blogs cried, “Oh please don’t go–
we’ll filter your content–we love you so!”
And the Little Blind Girl said, “No!”

The wild blogs roared their anonymous roars and gnashed their anonymous teeth
and rolled their anonymous eyes and showed their anonymous claws
but the Little Blind Girl logged onto her private blog and waved good-bye

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and clicked back over the cat videos
and in and out of memes
and through the gifs

and onto the home page of iliketheworldfuzzy
where she found her saved draft waiting for her

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and it was still good.

 

[all pictures are in the public domain via pixabay]

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Rude Things I Wanted To Say, As Told By Cute Animals

Whenever I want to say something rude, I get this weird feeling like my grandmother is listening in from heaven, so I chicken out.  But if there’s one thing we’ve all learned from the internet, it’s that cute animals make everything okay, right?  Well, that and a few things about porn that I really wish I didn’t know, but “Rude Things I Wanted To Say, As Told By Porn Stars” would involve a lot of really awkward photo editing and would probably still end up being rude.  So here are the rude things I’ve wanted to say lately, as told by cute animals because that makes it okay:

1.   While in traffic:

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2.  While waiting in line:

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3.  While in the park:

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4.  While on a date:

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5.  While at a stoplight next to a driver who’s playing a song that’s mostly bass:

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6.  While in a meeting:

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7.  While at a family reunion:

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8.  While watching reality television:

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9.  While stuck in a waiting room with The Guy Who Wouldn’t Shut Up:

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10.  While on hold with my phone company for the fifth time:

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Whew, I feel much better now!  I hope this was as cathartic for you as it was for me.  If it wasn’t, I’d tell you what I think about that, but I’m out of cute animal pictures, so you’re just going to have to guess.

[all images are in the public domain and available on pixabay.com; text added by author]

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Miracles, Audrey Hepburn Movies, And Other True Stories About My Mom

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image in public domain via pixabay.com; text added

Mother’s Day snuck up on me, which seems appropriate because my mother often does the same thing.  I wanted to write a Mother’s Day post this year, partly because I’m running out of blog topics I have a fantastic mother who’s always worth writing about and partly because I’ve had particular reason to appreciate her over the last year.  I wasn’t sure quite how to approach it, though.  My Sainted Mother has made a number of appearances on this blog already, and most of the stories she wouldn’t mind me telling the entire internet have already been told.

Fortunately, I found inspiration in the news. I try to stay educated on current events because, appropriately enough, my mother raised me to believe that it’s my duty to stay informed as a voter and as a member of society.  I also like to check to see if we’ve gone to war with anyone new since yesterday, and I wish I meant that as a joke.  So I took a look at the news and oh, the news, the news did not disappoint.

At first I thought it did, and not because of headlines about serial killers, though there were headlines about serial killers.  The news I’m talking about was equally shocking, but it was also, somehow, horrendously mundane.  I read articles about political sniping and voters trying to decide which candidate for leader of the free world is the least worst; interviews in which global atrocities were politicized and romanticized, and in the process trivialized; and editorials in respected publications demanding that the moral beliefs of private citizens be enforced as law.  How can any rational being not be disappointed in news like this?

Inadvertently, however, all that muck made it obvious to me how I should approach this Mother’s Day post.  My mother is everything that’s missing from the news today.  She’s intelligent, free-thinking, non-judgmental, and familiar with the rules of grammar.  (She’s also, and this is really neither here nor there when it comes to the news, very good-looking.  When she went abroad as a young woman, snobby Parisian men lost their snobby Parisian heads over her in spite of her being an American.  True story).  What stands out to me most clearly right now, though, and what has lasted rather longer than the dew on her skin and the gloss in her hair, is how classy she is.  Life with my mother is like an Audrey Hepburn movie:  it’s beautiful, it’s fun, and it’s clearly better for having her in it.  It’s also simply not the same with anyone else.

All my life, whenever I’ve gone somewhere with my mother, I’ve seen the people around her just bloom, and I’ve tried for years to pin down why.  Other people can be nice, polite, thoughtful, helpful, all those same attributes my mother has, and they don’t have the same effect.  You can do the exact things she does and say the exact words she says with all the same tones and inflections, but you won’t get the same results–trust me, I’ve tried; it’s like the beginning of Peter Pan without the fairy dust.  But when you’re with my mother, something about her makes the world start acting like a dusty summer garden when it finally rains; all the beautiful things can lift up their heads and flourish, and they do.

In hotels, when she travels, she knows the names of the concierge, the manager, the assistant managers, the coffee shop baristas, the housekeepers, the gardeners, and the maintenance staff.  She doesn’t learn their names to curry favor, she does it because she wants to know their names.  She knows which waiter in the hotel restaurant has a child applying to colleges and whose grandmother is recovering from surgery, and she also knows which colleges and what kind of surgery.  When someone is in distress, she asks if she can do anything and hopes the answer is yes.  She’ll read this, I know, and she’ll think I’m painting a picture of a rosebush and leaving out the thorns.  I’m not.  Even my mother can’t deny that I’m not the kind of person who leaves out the thorns.  I’m just the kind of person who recognizes what she’s got, and I’ve got an exceptionally classy mother.

This blog post was almost very different, though, because the twist in this particular tale is that I’m adopted.  I suspect that, no matter what the circumstances are, most adopted children never really stop being afraid that they’ll be rejected, and that’s still my biggest fear.  Rationally speaking, I know that my adoption is probably not going to be undone after thirty-five years, but tell that to a kid who grew up knowing she’d been returned to sender once already.  My mother (and father and sister) gave me a home and a family and I will never stop being grateful for that, but a home and a family couldn’t soothe my fear because they’re the very things I’ve been so afraid I’ll lose.  It would take a miracle to banish that fear.  So my mother performed a miracle.  She raised me with a love so strong and so good that it overcame every fear and doubt, and made me believe.  She made me hers.

My mother gave a motherless child the impossible gift:  total and unshakeable faith in her love for me.  I will always be her daughter and she will always be my mother.  She told me so, and she lives her life with such honor and grace that I could never doubt her.  She made room for me in her home and her heart, and she’s my mother not by blood or even by court order, but by a lifetime of love.  She’s a class act if ever there was one, and no matter what else is going on in my life or what horrible things are in the news, all I have to do to find the good in this world is think of her.  I know that my sister, her biological daughter, feels the same.  I’ll never be able to repay my mother for what she’s done for me and been to me.  All I can do is say thank you.

Thank you, Mom.  I love you so much.  Happy Mother’s Day.

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Modern Dueling, Or: How To Use Up That Spray Cheese

retro-1310390_640 7I recently got into a debate over whether dueling could be considered ethical.  It was the kind of debate you only get into when you start discussing philosophy late at night with people you just met, which is one reason I like philosophy so much.  What else will get you in a no-holds-barred fight about the epistemological implications of reality television (translation:  are the Kardashians making us stupider, or do we just feel stupider for having watched them?).  But, really, dueling?  Surely we can all agree on that, right?

And then I got to thinking, which is an unfortunate side effect of philosophy, and I wondered–could there be a place for dueling in modern society?  And then I got hungry, which is another side effect of philosophy,  especially when done at 2 AM, and I sought revelation in that temple of modern worship, the refrigerator.  Even the knottiest metaphysical conundrum becomes easier to unravel when you’ve had a nice sandwich.  Left-over chicken breast with mustard, maybe, or a nice peanut butter and jelly…

Oh, no.  New and much more pressing conundrum:  all I had was spray cheese and whipped cream.  Oh, I also had all sorts of healthy ingredients with which I could have cooked any number of dishes, but that’s not what you want at two in the morning, is it?  You want something easy, preferably unhealthy, possibly something past its expiration date.  Or chips.  No self-respecting philosopher cooks at two in the morning!  What could I do with spray cheese and a can of whipped cream?

That’s when it hit me, an idea so big it answered both my questions at once.  Question 1:  Is there a place for dueling in modern society?  Question 2:  What could I do with spray cheese and a can of whipped cream?  Answer to both:  it’s obvious!  This is how we can fight modern-day duels:  with aerosolized edibles!  It resolves questions of honor while simultaneously helping you clean out your pantry.  So much quicker and less expensive than lawsuits, plus you’ve got a tasty snack for after.  Well, you do if you pick the whipped cream.

The entire code duello fell into place after that epiphany.  The person challenged has choice of foodstuffs, but the challenger can reject the choice if the challenger presents medical documentation of an allergy to the selection.  Seconds will ensure that the weapons have not expired (it is recommended, but not required, that all duel-related edibles be purchased no more than three days before the date of the duel and still retain all tabs and plastic rings).  Cooking spray may be used in the event of a post-holiday spray food shortage, and it is acceptable to use well-shaken cans of soda if both parties agree, but no person of honor should ever profane beer in this manner.  Unless it’s PBR, in which case, spray away.

When aiming the chosen comestible, one must avoid the face and neck.  The best practice is to wear about one’s person a set of appropriate agreed-upon targets, such as strawberries or crackers, the choice of targets being dependent upon what food will be aimed at them.  It is recommended against using ice cream for this purpose as the target items will tend to become difficult to distinguish upon melting.  The first participant to hit each of his opponent’s targets with the spray food wins the duel.  Either participant may forfeit at any time by eating his remaining targets.  It is considered bad form to continue firing while your opponent is still chewing.

I think this could revolutionize modern society.  Who wouldn’t want to watch a couple of supposed adults attacking each other with spray cheese?  We could televise the duels, have commentators discuss the relative merits of name-brand vs. store-brand and the strategic placement of crackers.  Then we could have late-night philosophy debates over what’s making us dumber:  dueling with spray food or keeping up with the Kardashians.  Any resulting quarrels could be resolved by dueling or, in the alternative, attempting to keep up with the Kardashians.

But if the Kardashians decide to duel each other with edible spray paint (in gold, of course, while naked), I’m not responsible for the resulting global collapse of meaning, logic, and reason.  In fairness to me, I’m pretty sure that’s already happened.

Embed from Getty Images
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