I just took Our dog to the vet for his shots and a routine “juicing” of his anus.
The receipt showed $30 for “anal expression”. I wanted to say, “What kind of $30 expression did his anus make because every time I see it, it’s making this same face <makes face like I just ate a lemon>.”
Instead, I kept that thought to myself, bid them adieu, and went about my business.
I think we’re supposed to be getting one of those Menards hardware stores near us. This makes me anxious – but not in a good way.
Some of you hate the word “moist” and others of you cringe at the word “poop”; neither of those bother me. For me, it’s the name Menards that makes me bristle.
Try as I might, every time I hear that word, I think of a crude Irishman scratching himself and mumbling, “Menards itch.” Gross. I wonder if there’s a store in Ireland called Mynads and an Irishman over there who bristles when someone says that name because it sounds like something that a crude American might say?
The boys and I went to get haircuts this evening and I got stuck with the beauty operator who is, in my opinion, the least skilled of the 10 or so employees on the payroll. She’s not horrible but I have had to go home and touch-up my own hair a couple of times after she’s busted my wig in the past. Not only are her trade skills a bit lacking, but her brand of small talk is just kind of off-putting to me. It’s like we don’t really get each other but instead of just being comfortable in the silence, she forces me in to having inane conversation with her each time I’m in her chair.
Today’s session started off about as well as it could with her apologizing in advance for not being too conversational today. Five seconds of silence didn’t pass before she felt compelled to tell me about her fresh head cold and pesky chest congestion as she put her hands all over my head. Hands that have surely wiped fresh mucus from her diseased nose. Hands that have surely received the yield of a chesty cough.
I don’t know most of what she said after that because I was so irritated and worried by her decision to come to work sick today and lay her hands on me, but I can tell you that the apology for not being conversational was unnecessary – she was more conversational today than she has ever been.
Anyway, I can’t wait to see how long it will take for my summer cold to incubate in my system before it hatches into a fully grown and highly active virus. Or maybe I won’t catch it? Because when I shot her a nervous look when she first told me she had a nasty cold, she assured me that she wasn’t contagious. Thanks for the good news, Dr. Oz, whatever you say.
I don’t mean to sound like an alarmist, but do we have a disaster plan in place for how to safely evacuate the legions of people who plan to stare at the sun with a pair of $4 paper sunglasses on their faces and, as a result, are left newly blind and standing helplessly in that giant swath of premium eclipse-viewing area that stretches across the country? How will we get them all safely back home? Who’s going to teach them Braille? Has production for dark, wraparound sunglasses and red and white canes been ramped-up yet? I mean, I think we have enough trouble in this country as it is.
Steve Martin joked that he’d like to hire the person who is in charge of PR for the eclipse. If they weren’t available, I think the next best person might be the PR person for Yeti coolers.
I don’t have a Yeti cooler and I don’t care if I ever have one. I have that attitude because it’s a cooler. A cooler either works to keep my ice cold overnight or it doesn’t. At this point in my life, I’m not willing to pay a premium for a couple of hours of extended life for my ice cubes. It’s weird to me how people now want to advertise that they use this brand of cooler. I see hats, shirts, bumper stickers, mugs and the like every time I venture out into public that suggests that owners of Yeti coolers are a proud bunch. I don’t get it.
Maybe I’ll try something along those lines though to see what all of the fuss is about? Marissa and I received a blender nearly 22 years ago for our wedding. She makes smoothies with it today and it still seems to serve its purpose well. I think it might be a Kitchen-Aid brand. If I get some time this afternoon, I may contact the folks at Kitchen-Aid to see if I can get some swag for my car and to spice up my wardrobe? If that doesn’t work out, maybe I’ll do some promotion of those styrofoam disposable coolers you can buy at convenient stores – as I’m sure they could use a little random and spontaneous product love and appreciation, too.
The possibilities seem endless here. Anyway, continue to enjoy the heck out of your Yeti coolers, people! While you’re doing that, I’ll be over here mocking you behind your backs.
(Disclaimer: if you are reading this and you’re my friend who owns a Yeti cooler with matching outfit and bumper stickers, I’m not talking about you. You are cool and it’s the other people who are ridiculously enthusiastic about everyday household items that I’m making fun of here.)
Sitting in the gate area across from a thin man of approximately 50 years of age wearing a blazer and sporting that Michael McDonald-esque silvery feather cut. Resting upon his nose, were a pair of plastic black glasses that looked like he may have received in 2009 at the New Years Eve shindig at Times Square (subsequently breaking off the 2 and 9, leaving a very ridiculous looking set of Mr. Potato Head glasses).
I thought to myself that this guy either runs his own business OR (more likely) he has earned himself a town pass for good behavior at the asylum where they issue glasses without sharp edges so the residents are less likely to fashion a shank from their eyewear to attack staff.
You just don’t see many working stiff, middle-management types sporting drastic, edgy eyewear like that. It’s hard for me to comprehend how someone could pull those from the sea of glasses at LensCrafters, put them on, look in the mirror and say, “Yeah, these’ll do.”
Those glasses say that “I own a chain of successful record stores in the Pacific Northwest” OR “I smear my own feces in my hair” – it’s one or the other and nowhere in between.
The mystery was solved when I noticed that he was sipping on a martini by the time I filed past his first-class seat on my way back to my seat near the toilet in the back of the plane. I guess it’s a look that works well for him. Maybe if I start dressing like Harlan Sanders for work, people will start to notice that I’m wicked-smart, eccentric and therefore deserving of some sort of high-level executive gig? I’m going out to buy a white suit and shoes when I get home.
It has been a while since I’ve given Delta Airlines a chance to serve me a cup of coffee. Since that time, they’ve converted to the exclusive use of Starbucks – a coffee that I’m familiar with and tend to enjoy.
Today they wheeled the cart by with some freshly brewed coffee after a snack and some water. It sounded good to me so I asked for one.
Let me tell you, the switch to Starbucks isn’t helping at all. I took one sip and threw it away. As I handed the full cup of to the flight attendant and she gave me a quizzical look, I asked her if she has ever tried the coffee. She said “yeah, it’s Starbucks so it’s kind of strong isn’t it?” I started to tell her that I usually drink cowboy coffee that’s strong enough to stand a spoon up in and leaves coffee grounds in my teeth but I could see in her eyes that she wasn’t ready to hear all of that so I just handed it to her with a smile and a nod.
The best coffee beans in the world will make a cup of coffee that tastes like ass when you use a cup of polluted water to brew it. I hope that I don’t catch the cancer from that little sip that I just took. Never again.
It was a chilly day in the Florida Panhandle, but for some reason, that didn’t stop me from throwing on a sweatshirt and shorts then hopping on my motorcycle for a ride to visit one of my friends and his wife at their house that was off of the military installation where I lived at the time.
About five minutes into my 15 minute ride, the breeze that had been entering the scoop in my shorts that led to my nether regions made me feel as if I were riding with no pants on. Uncomfortably cold and numb from the waist down, I arrived at my friend’s house and went inside.
His wife was sitting on the couch and looked at my shorts and almost screamed what I thought was “Frank! Your nuts!”. I instinctively moved my hands to my lap to cover myself, feeling sure that somehow my bits had exposed themselves and I was hanging brain in front of her in her own living room. A true feeling of dread and embarrassment spread over me.
Soon after she quit laughing, I realized that she meant “Frank! You’re nuts!” because you’d have to be crazy to ride a motorcycle in shorts when it was that cold outside – you know, THAT kind of nuts.
Let this story help to illustrate the practical application of understanding the material difference between the words ‘your’ and ‘you’re’.
Earlier this evening as I sat at a traffic light initially minding my own business, I casually looked over to see what was going on next to me. We were three wide at the light. There was a guy in an SUV in the lane next to me who hadn’t pulled all the way up to the light which left me with a full view of the late model Honda sedan two lanes over from me. In that car sat a lady who appeared to be clean, professional and in her mid-30’s.
Nothing abnormal about that scene so far, right? Well, I held my gaze at her long enough to see that she had one of her booger hooks stuffed in her nose to the second knuckle aggressively scraping her nasal bacon. There was no looking away at that point. She stared straight ahead and relied upon the cloak of invisibility she must have thought her car provided to hide her vile habit from public view.
Ladies and gentlemen, I haven’t even reached the climax of this story yet. After hooking the booger with her long and spindly digit, she withdrew her finger and its harvest from her nostril, did a barely perceptible pinch and roll and ATE THAT BOOGER! (I’m getting the willies just typing this.)
Time seemed to stand still while this was going on so I don’t know how long I was there but she did this three times at that traffic light. Not once did she turn her head to see who might be watching her engage in this deplorable habit.
The light changed and I didn’t know what to do so I laid on my horn as I drove next to her. I’m not sure what I hoped to achieve by doing that but I desperately wanted her to know that I knew of her dark habit so that she might be a little ashamed. It wouldn’t end like that though as her head and eyes were locked in a forward-looking position even as I honked the horn in one of those sustained honks (probably because the horn on a Volvo S80 sedan is not nearly as impressive as you might think it would be). Evidently the guy next to me watched the vile show she put on for us because he looked at me and smiled and shook his head and then started laughing at me as I honked my horn.
I don’t know about you people, but I always thought that talk about people eating their own boogers was just an exaggeration because nobody would really do something like that. That’s something that separates human beings from apes. Well, I can tell you that she walks among us – she, with her booger fingers and booger breath.
If I’m missing something, and it’s a commonly accepted underground habit for adult human beings to pick and eat their own boogers, and you’re one who does that, please, never tell me you do. I can overlook many character/personality flaws to see the good in people but if you pick and eat your own boogers, we simply can no longer be friends.
Sometimes, for no particular reason, random memories about what might seem like insignificant events to others come rushing back to me. The most recent one that just came to me involved a road trip that I was on with several friends.
We were staying in a condo at a mountain resort, and at the time, we were hanging out in the pool area. Several of my friends were playing cards at a table on the pool deck and I had just come out of the pool, dripping wet, and went over to see what they were playing. I stood there for a minute and saw that one of my friends looked at me with an agitated and simultaneously horrified look on his face and screamed “DAMMIT FRANK! YOU’RE DRIPPING YOUR BALL WATER ALL OVER MY SHOES!” I hadn’t noticed that I was straddling the tennis shoes that he had kicked off when we first arrived at the pool and indeed just how much “ball water” my swim trunks had released into his shoes until he said something.
I think the thing that was so funny to me about this was how I had absolutely no idea that I was standing over his shoes, how manic he got about it and how he instinctually declared the water from my swim trunks as being “ball water.”
My bad -as they say.
Let Me Be Frank With You 