Kira in the Car

Kira and I were driving to school listening to the radio when she got a look of utter horror on her face.  I said, "Oh my god! What's the matter?"  And she said, "Aren't you listening to this story??!"  There was a news story on the radio about cyclones in Japan.  I said, "You mean about the cyclones ravaging the coast of Japan?"

She took a breath and looked relieved and said, "Oh.  I thought they said cyclops."

Someone finally gave a good description of what depression is really like.  Thank you Allie Brosh!

High Fashion

The family went out and had a lovely dinner with my parents who are in town for a few days.  After dinner we said our goodbyes and got in the car when Sam remembered that he had a present for my dad.  It is a belt that closes with a seat belt buckle instead of a real buckle because both my son and my dad think that is cool.  (Coolness skips a generation, apparently.)

Anyway, Kira and I were looking at the belt and it has a word on it which we assumed was some fancy French brand name.  We were trying to pronounce it, "Ehrmahgerd".  We said it over and over again; "Ehrmahgerd, Ehrmahgerd Ehrmahgerd..." And then we figured it out. It isn't a fancy brand name. It is, "Oh my god" the way a dopey teenager would say it. 

 

My dad is going to love it. I can't wait to see him wearing it. 

Movie Review: Oblivion

We went to see the movie Oblivion last night.  Mitch and I are always a little wary of Tom Cruise movies because they are all ©TOM CRUISE movies, know what I mean?  It's not so much Tom Cruise acting as another character, because Tom Cruise never transforms himself into another character.  He instead turns all the characters he plays into ©TOM CRUISE and a person can only stand so much ©TOM CRUISE.

Anyway, it was another ©TOM CRUISE movie but it was pretty good despite that fact.  Before the movie begins, Earth apparently was in a war with an alien force who destroyed our moon which caused a lot of problems.  The planet was destroyed but Earth won the war.  Most of the people of Earth moved to Titan, a moon of Saturn, but Tom and his beautiful partner Victoria are stationed on Earth to watch over these giant machines that are sucking up sea water and converting it to energy.  Tom is on "drone maintenance" and Victoria is "control" so she sits in their tower and works a giant iPhone and tells him what to do and where to go.

Tom keeps having dreams about a different beautiful woman on Earth before the war but that's just stupid because he was never on Earth before the war!  Where is this coming from?!  Then one day a capsule crashes to Earth and Tom goes to investigate.  It's a bunch of pods containing humans, one of which is the beautiful woman from his dreams.  Confusion ensues.

It was an entertaining movie, and beautiful to watch.  Here is the gist:  Earth - Amazing; Drones - dangerous and unsafe for humans.  I loved the little helicopter plane that Tom flies around in the movie, but if I were to actually ride in it, it would be a barf-o-rama.  What I didn't like is that women chosen to play Tom's love interests seem to be played by beautiful eighth graders.  The man is 50.  That's just gross.  

"Hey, little girl, I lost my dog, will you help me find him?  Hop into my van and we'll drive around and look.
Want some candy?"

"Oh, sorry mister, but I have to go home and finish my science project."

"Hey, little girl, you're parents have been in an accident, I was sent here to get you and bring you to them.
Open the door."  

"But my mom just texted me and told me to finish my chores.  I'm calling the police, you old pervert." 

Kira in the car

Kira: What was my first word?

Me:  "Cup" I think.

Kira:  What if my first word was "quote?"

Me:  What? Why?

Kira: Because then when I'm old and dying I could say, (in croaky, dying voice) "Unquote!"

Some weird pictures

Sam had a wild eyebrow hair so we took a picture of it.  I was holding it out and I was no where near the end when I snapped this picture. 

Kira practiced some first-aid last night.  Now she knows just what to do if she ever sprains her face. 

Why I wish it would stop snowing:

1.  I made a snowman for the joy of watching it melt and I hurt my back lifting up the giant balls because I'm so out of shape because...

2. When it snows I would rather be drinking beer or wine until I fall asleep than doing housework, working out, parenting, being a good human being, etc. etc. (anything really).

3.  If I have to scrape ice of my goddamn windshield one more time I will slash my own tires and set my car on fire.

4.  The watery dogshit in the yard is multyplying exponentially with every new snowfall we get.  I can feel it. 

5.  The pure depression of yet another snowfall almost caused me to impulse-buy a baby duck.  Kira was all for it.

 

 

6. I'm sick of Mitch telling me how many inches I'll be getting every night.   

This April Sucks

What a shitty week!  Yesterday I neglected to bathe all day and I wallowed in my own filth because we had a snow day because we got two feet of snow (NO SHIT),

My clothesline.  No April-freshness around here this year.

and I was too busy monitoring the MANHUNT! (thanks, ABC) for the Boston bomber.  I'm really really glad they got that guy who did the bombings and that he's still alive.  The whole time I was sucked in to watching a bunch of cops standing around (hours and hours and hours) and listening to media personalities ad lib (hours and hours and hours) I was thinking two things: 1) They shut down an entire metropolitan area for a stupid teenager??? and 2) I REALLY need a shower.

Although I was totally sucked in to the media frenzy surrounding the MANHUNT! I worry that giving awful things like that so much attention encourages more crazies to come out and show how crazy they really are.  Not only "big crazy," like hurting masses of strangers, but also "little crazy."  Take, for instance, Chuck Woolery from the show Love Connection back in the '80s.

Chuck Woolery (on the right)

Yesterday he tweeted:

Okay, crazy.  Thanks, that really helps.  When he's not strangling cats for cameras, he's coming up with inflammatory conspiracy theories.

And this on Facebook from someone related to me:

Huh?  I haven't drunk Kool-Aid in years and years.  Thanks for the memories!  Now, what the hell are you talking about?

So not only was I filthy, wasting an entire day, and learning that beloved '80s icons and relatives are racist jingoists, but now I was really craving Kool-Aid and couldn't go out because of the blizzard!  Arg!

But in my intense research of the Boston Bombings I also learned that the guy from the wheelchair picture on the day of the bombing:

is named Jeff Bauman Jr.  He lost both his legs below the knees in the bombing but when he came-to after his first surgery in the hospital he was able to communicate to his brother that he saw the bomber and could identify him.  His statement helped the FBI figure out who did it.  Incredible.  And the guy in the cowboy hat helped save Jeff's life by wrapping his legs in tourniquets and then pinching off an artery (pictured) on the way to the hospital.  Jeff is in for a lot of medical treatment, rehabilitation, and prosthetics.  One of his friends started a gofundme.com site for him where you can contribute and help pay his medical expenses and write him a note.

So visit the site.  Contribute a few bucks.  Write him a note.

And if you have the time and inclination, tell the Chuck Woolerys and racist relatives of the world to go fuck themselves.

Wha???

I wouldn't call myself a radical feminist by any means, and I'm sometimes disappointed with

the stereotypical woman's-world life I've led (so far), but the other night I found myself flipping through the channels on TV and I came across this on America's Top Model:

The contest for the week was to see who could look the most convincingly TAXIDERMIED on film.  The girl in the picture above got an extra point from the judges because her collar bones showed through the hole.  I am not even kidding. 

My mouth was hanging open and I was speechless.  This is the nineties, people!  (it's not? oh.)  We have come too far to pretend we were hunted and our heads are hanging in a den as a trophy!  That is not even a sentence anyone should ever have to write!  The show should be renamed "America's dumbest, most shameless, anti-female, shithead," starring queen of the shitheads, Tyra Banks!

Crazy moron

 

TruthCam

My dad got a Truthcam 35! wildlife camera for Christmas.  You set it up in the woods and then when something walks by, it snaps a picture.  I think it must be on a motion sensor.  Here's some of his pics:

For some reason I find this picture very funny.  It's deer forehead.  And did you notice the deer in the background biting at his own butt?  Funny.

  

(not a deer)

Did you notice all the goddamn snow we still have?  It has been snowing for days and days.  It is SO ANNOYING.  

Why having a large vocabulary is important

I was reading blogs this morning and came across this one from Kathleen at Brutalism:

Because I'm a teacher and I find the process of learning so innately beautiful, I will walk you through my particular learning process upon seeing this post.

First I read the title of the post and didn't get it.  I didn't know what a merkin was, but I was pretty sure it was a small pickle.  (I have subsequently found out I was thinking of a gherkin.)  Because I thought a merkin was a pickle, I didn't get why a person would donate hair to a charity called "Merkins of Hope."

Moving on.  I then looked at the picture of the sequined bacon and thought to myself, "mmmmmmm..........bacoooooooooonnnnnnn......."  and then saw that it was made by a company called Montabahn Pasties.  I know what pasties are.  I learned it the hard way.  They are BOTH this:

teeny, usually tassled nipple covers mostly used by sex workers, AND ALSO THIS:

A meat pie.

For decades I thought the only noun form of  "pasty" was meat pie so you can imagine my confusion when I heard someone say, "... and then she walked in wearing nothing but pasties!"  Interesting.  

Anyway, back to the Brutalism blog post.  Because the bacon was of the sequined variety, and not the meat-pie variety, I made the assumption that this particular company was selling tiny nipple covers and not meat pies.  But then I thought, "But HOW does one wear this sequined bacon on their nipples?  It isn't exactly nipple-shaped and would look odd."  I was confused.  I totally didn't get it.  Then I looked back to see where I went wrong.  Kathleen gave credit for the title to 30 Rock.  I've seen every episode of 30 Rock and vaguely remember that quote, but didn't get it.  I probably thought, "Why would Jenna donate her hair to a pickle company?"  Then I laughed because that would  be ridicuous!  Oh!  That's the joke! I get it!  (I thought).  

Then I saw that although the sequined bacon is made by a company that specializes in pasties (NOT the food kind), but the product is called a bacon MERKIN, not a bacon PASTY.  Perhaps I was wrong in making the assumption that a merkin is a small pickle.  On to Dictionary.com:

And then:

...Ooooohhhhhhhhhhhhhh..........  I get it now!  Now it all makes sense!  The 30 Rock quote was NOT a joke about how ridiculous it would be to donate hair to a pickle factory, The sequined bacon is not meant to oddly hang off the nipples, and the post Kathleen wrote was about how wonderful Etsy is in that you can buy anything!  Even bacon merkins!  

Although, mostly what I get out of this whole experience just makes me want this:

Bacon Gherkin

Family Secrets

When I was little my dad had a rabbit hutch in the back yard where he raised New Zealand white rabbits.  I loved it because what little girl doesn't like a big box full of bunnies? 

Our hutch was very much like this except it was painted green. 
The point is there was plenty of room to walk around underneath and get at the rabbit turds.

I loved playing with the baby bunnies and it never really occurred to me that they weren't multiplying like proverbial rabbits.  There always seemed to be enough, but not too many.  I never gave it a second thought.

On a totally different subject: when I was a kid we ate a LOT of chicken. 

And it was always in pieces.  Never a whole chicken like I saw on cartoons.

When I asked my mom why we never had a whole chicken her answer was, "This is a different kind of chicken."  I never thought about it again.  I was too busy having an ideal childhood playing with my baby bunnies and marveling how their turds looked so much like Coco Puffs. 

Then when my sisters and I were grown, we were teasing my mom, telling her about all the times we snuck out of the house, and where we really were when we told her we were at a friend's house, or at a church lock-in, or at "prom."  

She didn't think it was funny. 

Then she said, "Remember all that chicken we ate when you were kids?"  We didn't know where she was going with this.  One of us said, "Way to change the subject, Mom! Yeah, what about it?"  She said, "It wasn't chicken, it was New Zealand white rabbits.  From the back yard."

We were stunned.  In retrospect, it was pretty obvious.  When the rabbits got big enough to scratch and not be so fun anymore, they disappeared.  But still, it was a shocker.  As we sat there with our mouths hanging open, thinking about the fate of all the poor Thumpers, Mom said,  "Want to keep telling secrets?"

We didn't.

Mmmmmmmmmm.....deliciousssssss..........

On another totally different subject, we had a LOT of good luck when we were kids.  I attribute it to the lucky rabbit's feet that were so ubiquitous in the 1970s.