31

Jul

Literal-Minded Parents Seek Irony-Free School Zones

TYSONS CORNER, Virginia.  This booming suburb is situated on a watershed point between two clashing American subcultures; conservative Southern Baptists, many of whom have ancestors who were “f.f.v’s”–members of the first families of Virginia, and newcomers drawn here by information economy jobs in high-tech or government.


Home in Tysons Corner. 

“I don’t cotton much to some of the johnnie-come-lately’s we’re getting around here,” says Graham Buchter, whose ancestors grew tobacco back when it was literally used as currency here.  “They’re a bunch of talkers–they wear me out.”


Buchter:  “Give your damn mouth a rest, would you?”

Mr. Buchter and his wife send their three children to the local public school, but with more than a little trepidation.  “They come home all sassy,” says Virginia Buchter.  “Those new kids put a lot of silly ideas in their heads from their MTV and whatnot.  It takes me a half hour to settle them down to do their homework.”


“I’m just watching to see the kind of vile filth our kids are exposed to.  I’ll come to bed in an hour–or two.”

So the Buchters are joining with other tradition-minded parents to expand the concept of drug-free and gun-free school zones to encompass a social ill they say is just as bad; “Smart-alecky talk,” says Mr. Buchter.  “It eats away at parents’ God-given right to respect from their children.”


“All in favor of sarcastic, smart-alecky kids raise your hands.”

The Buchters obtained enough signatures to place a warrant on the ballot at this fall’s town meeting to prohibit the use of intentional sarcasm or other figurative or literally false speech, including facetiousness, and if informal polls are right, the vote will be a close one.


“Oh come on, people–can’t you take a joke?”

“This is a terrible precedent to set,” said Naomi Black, a staff attorney at the eastern Virginia chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union and an avowed fan of Seinfeld who likes to make fun of her husband with cutting remarks such as “He’s great in bed–if you like snoring.”  “This nation was founded on the notion that you can say anything you want as long as it’s not libelous, incendiary, obscene, offensive to certain protected groups of which I’m a member, or ‘Fire’ in a crowded theatre unless you’re watching ‘Bambi’ or ‘Backdraft’.”


Thumper:  “You want to take a walk in the forest and get natural?”

Pediatric exposure to sarcasm has increased dramatically over the past forty years according to the Institute for the Study of Obvious Phenomena at Bowling Green University, as filmmakers have injected subtexts in animated cartoons that can be appreciated by parents who accompany their children to  the movies, and loser adults who go by themselves.  “The average CSI, or Cinematic Sarcasm Index, of a feature-length cartoon has risen dramatically since ’101 Dalmatians’,” says Dr.  Vendell Benson.  “You would only have room for maybe 88 dalmatians today with all the lame adult jokes they cram in.”


“Why don’t I sit on your lap and we’ll talk about the first thing to come up?”

Television cartoons have been infected as well, with the most notorious case being SpongeBob SquarePants, a sponge with fey mannerisms who has developed a following among homosexuals.  Rumors that SpongeBob himself is gay have dogged him since he was found passed out in a soapdish at a San Francisco bath house following a Saturday night “skip and wave” show at the Nob Hill Masonic Center.  “I can assure SpongeBob’s many fans that he is a hermaphroditic sponge who reproduces asexually and has been in a committed relationship with himself for several years,” said Cheryl Annan, a spokesperson for Nickleodeon.  “Not that there’s anything wrong with that.”

546 days ago Short URL Comments

Uncategorized

/////

30

Jul

In Freedonia, Missing Myths Mean Much

KLZYGRZYK, Freedonia.  This landlocked nation was the scene of some of the most bitter battles of the twentieth century as well as a number of monumental natural disasters, and as a result its borders have been described by one cartographer as “a moveable feast.”


Lake Oethzrk:  Freedonia’s only navigable body of water.

“Freedonia, she is the battered wife of geography,” says Emil Zlotny of the University of Phlegmkz.  “Bosnia takes a swipe at her, an earthquake comes along and gives half of the Plzrtz province to Burkina Faso–it never ends.”

The constant upheaval means Freedonians have lost more than just land mass, however.  “When Czechoslovakia czeched out in 1992, someone had left our national epic poem, The Globblamon, in a locker at a bus station in Prague,” says Ranek Beramagou.  “We had no long boring work of verse to inflict upon children in 8th grade language arts classes.”


2 zokreb postage stamp

All that is about to change, however, as a crack team of American liberal arts majors has been dispatched to the war-torn nation to help rebuild its national myth from scratch, an undertaking that scholars say is the first of its kind in world history.  “In the past when a nation was destroyed it was embalmed in a museum in a more prosperous country,” says Michael van der Wermer.  “The problem for Freedonia was they couldn’t afford a pencil to write down their oral culture.”


“Okay, so boy meets girl, boy loses girl, dragon eats girl.”

van der Wermer and three other recent college graduates with degrees in the humanities or social studies have been meeting regularly with displaced natives, collecting bits of folk wisdom that they hope to weave into an epic tale for present and future Freedonians, even if no one in the past ever heard of it.  “A work such as Gilgamesh or Beowulf is really important to the identity of a people,” says Marci Ulrich, who majored in the History and Philosophy of the Humanities and Social Studies at the University of California-Santa Barbara.  “It becomes part of the warp and woof–probably also the weft–of the fabric of their lives.”

 
Aid workers hand footnotes across dangerous rapids.

Paul Fussel, who fashioned his own interdiscipinary major at Oberlin College out of bits and pieces drawn from linguistics, ethnomusicology and Canadian bacon and pineapple pizza, says he’s encouraged by the progress the group has made in just two short months on the job.  “At first the elders would complain that they were hungry,” he recalls.  “I told them–’This is like homework, you don’t get a snack until you tell me how the earth mother gave birth to the first Freedonian.’”


“Please–no more rhymed couplets!”

Amanda Taft-Hartley, a University of Wisconsin Comparative Literature graduate who is taking a year off before starting work on her masters degree, says the group is focusing like a laser on the work they still have left, however.  “I don’t mean to downplay the importance of potable water and passable roads to get food to outlying areas,” she says, “but if your country doesn’t have an ancient poem to call its own, you’ll never get written up in the top academic journals.”

547 days ago Short URL Comments

Uncategorized

/////

29

Jul

Learning to Live With Radical Presbyterianism

Despite the havoc they have wreaked and the flight delays they have caused, there is a new, more nuanced attitude towards those pejoratively referred to as “Islamofascists” abroad in the West these days.

            Consider Faisal Ahmad Shinwari, a judge who banned women from singing on television, threatened to outlaw cable TV, and upheld the death penalty for two journalists who criticized Afghanistan’s turn towards Islam. 


Fareed Zakaria

            The proper attitude towards such a reactionary, says Fareed Zakaria, author of The Post-American World, is not to condemn reflexively, but to consider him in context.  Remove him, and you lump a comparative moderate in with the jihadists.  Leave him in place, and there’s a chance he’ll shut down “Rob and Big” and other MTV reality shows.  Now that would be progress.

 
Rob & Big:  From left to right, Big, Rob

            The proponents of this pragmatic line of thinking say a more tolerant approach will succeed where force has failed to persuade terrorists to abandon the religious fanaticism that keeps them out of the community of civilized nations.

            It’s certainly worth a try.  After all, it worked with Presbyterians.


John Calvin:  “Snnf–do I smell popcorn?”

            Presbyterianism, founded on the theological teachings of John Calvin in Scotland, is a mainline Protestant denomination in America, but in its formative years it raised the hackles of Anglicans, Catholics and just about every other religion it came into contact with.  Its adherents were stereotyped as humorless, sexless enemies of free thought and inquiry.  In an 1822 letter Thomas Jefferson reported that in his village of Charlottesville, where Presbyterians were one of many denominations, “all mix in society with perfect harmony.”  Where Presbyterianism prevailed “undividedly,” he noted, their “ambition and tyranny would tolerate no rival” and they succumbed to a “fever of fanaticism.”

            Sound familiar?


Jefferson:  “Sorry–I don’t date Presbyterian chicks.”

            Don’t get me wrong.  I know some very nice Scots Presbyterians—in fact I married one.  But I truly believe that Islamofascists can be persuaded to temper their dogmatic tendencies, just as the Presbyterians were.

            Take beheadings, a barbaric form of execution that is applied without trial by Islamic radicals.  Before they switched to the more enlightened approach of hanging, beheading was the preferred method of capital punishment among Edinburgh’s Presbyterians.  The resulting portable body part was then used as a decoration on the gates of the city.  Click on “Outdoor Accessories and Pillows” at the Pottery Barn website for a current selection of Presbyterian patio headware.


“Honey, could you light the Dissenters Head Lamps, please?”

            As standards of Presbyterian decency rose over time, a more humane technique was adopted; the decedent was beheaded after being hanged.

            The monolithic outlook of Islamofascists, which drives them to seek a world-wide caliphate founded on Shari’a law, finds echoes in Scottish history as well.  In 1564, two men who had merely toasted the King of England’s health were whipped, nailed to gallows and cut to the bone with razors.  To make the punishment fit the crime, their tongues were drawn out to full length and bound with sticks and thread.

            Turning on its head the notion that, if you can’t say anything nice, don’t say anything at all.


Presbyterian Pool Party:  “Hey you kids–no dunking!”

            Consider the punishments handed out to those who violate restrictions on sexual activity in Islamic countries—the public stonings and floggings for adultery and fornication.  Now compare and contrast, if you will, Sir John Herring, who at the dawn of the 14th century in Scotland burned his daughter and her lover alive, while they were still in the house.  So much for Scottish thrift.

            Over time, Presbyterians moderated their views on the proper punishment for what we today consider “victimless” crimes.  By the end of the 16th century the laws of Scotland reflected a three-tiered sentencing guideline for fornication: a forty-pound fine for the first offense, eight days in prison for the second, and three duckings in the “foulest pool in town” for subsequent violations.

            No wonder Scottish birth rates are low.

            So it is possible that over time the hard edges will be sanded off the radical Islamofascists of today and their descendants will become just as pacific as Presbyterians, who nowadays invite infidels to Sunday morning coffee hours and hold church basement sock-hops.


Sock hop!

            This is not to say that all of the violence has been bred out of the Scots Presbyterians, however.

            When my wife reads this, she’s going to kill me.

548 days ago Short URL Comments

Uncategorized

/////

28

Jul

Getting By With Just One Castle

Wearing her diamond-studded crown, Queen Elizabeth II arrived at Parliament in a gleaming horse-drawn carriage to deliver a message of austerity and making do with less in troubled economic times.  Associated Press.


“I took a surplus Corgi to the Our Dumb Chums shelter just this morning.”

My Lords and Members of the House of Commons, I pray that the blessing of Almighty God may rest upon your counsels.

I come before you today in difficult times.  The British people have survived great threats to our nation in the past–the Norman Invasion, the Gunpowder Plot, World War II–but today we face an even greater challenge.  The imminent collapse of Amy Winehouse’s nose.

LABOUR MEMBERS:  Hear, hear!

 

Who left this copy of The Sun on my throne?  Anyway, not that threat, the threat of insolvency.

SEVERAL LORDS:  Shame!

With increasing demands on the exchequer, I am having a lot of trouble balancing my excheque book.  I don’t know how my account can be overdrawn when I still have plenty of excheques left.

 
“Pinky friends” checkbook.

LABOUR MP:  Why don’t you get rid of one of your bloody Corgis!

LORD:  More shame!

My household budget has been slashed to 7.9 million pounds.  To this I say–in the immortal words of Wimbledon bad boy John McEnroe–you can’t be serious!

LORDS:  Hear, hear!

To add insult to injury, my dingbat Finance Minister George Osborne says from now on I’m going to be audited–audited!  Like I’m some bust-out carpet-cleaning company or sweet-meat shoppe.

LABOUR MP:  It’s about time!

May I remind you, you’re not even the largest legislature in the world.  You’re behind China, and New Hampshire is gaining on you!  That’s right–a little New England state where it’s considered declasse to drive around without a dead deer in the bed of your pickup truck.

LORD:  Cool!

So fine–I “get it.”  You want me to cut back.  Well, I’m doing my part.  I wore my “everyday” crown today and I rode over in my horse-drawn carriage–which has over a hundred thousand miles on it, I might add–to demonstrate that I’m serious about this austerity thing.

LABOUR MP:  It’s a start!

But, as they say on cable TV–and I only get the basic package, so no Lifetime movies–there’s more.  Members of the House of Commons, estimates for the public services will now be laid before you.  First, I propose to cut back to 15 realms.  I don’t have time to visit them all anyway, so eenie, meenie, minie, mo, Tuvalu has got to go!

LORD:  Hear, hear!

Next, we’re going to have a Buckingham Palace garage sale.  I’m going to sell a couple of my titles, maybe Defender of the Faith and Lord of Man.  I never use them anyway.

LABOUR MP:  How much you want for Duke of Normandy?

Finally, I’m going to rent out three of my castles, Windsor, Balmoral and Sandringham House.  You know how it is–if you have a vacation house, suddenly everybody wants to be your friend, but nobody strips the bed when they leave.

LABOUR MP:  We wouldn’t know.


Balmoral Castle:  Available for summer rental, no pets allowed.

During these trying times we must maintain the stiff upper lip for which the British people are justly praised throughout the world, and the dignity commensurate with our position in the world.

In this regard, it has come to my attention that some members of this august body recorded a number of albums under the trade name and style of “Parliament-Funkadelic” during the 1970s, including “Motor Booty Affair” and “Mothership Connection,” which included the top ten single “Give Up the Funk (Tear the Roof of the Sucker).”

Let me be perfectly clear.  When my idiot son ascends to the throne and I become Queen Mother, any royalties from “Mothership Connection” will be mine.

549 days ago Short URL Comments

Uncategorized

/////

28

Jul

My Cats, World-Class Porn Dogs

A Jensen Beach, Florida man found to have child pornography on his computer blamed his cats for jumping on his keyboard.  Associated Press

My wife was out of town, so instead of locking the cats in the basement, I let them roam the house for a change.  I knew they’d sleep on the good couch, but what the hell.  They’re both males, and we all suffer under the heavy hand of feminine rules that are applied with such unforgiving strictness when she’s around.


Rocco, checking out the babes.

I’d fallen right to sleep; I’d stayed up a little too late the night before, smoking a cigar under a full moon, drinking a bottle of red wine with nobody around to say “You have to go to work tomorrow, shouldn’t you come to bed,” blodda blodda blah.


“Can I sign up for the Platinum Club?”

I woke up to the sound of tapping in the den next door.  My son was home, but he’s been holed up in his room since he arrived home for the summer–why would he be using my computer?


“Check out the nippers on the tabby!”

I got up and opened the door to find my cats, Rocco and Okie, with their front paws on the keys, drooling on the foam wrist support.

“What’s going on?” I snapped.

They fumbled around clumsily, reaching for the “Escape” button to change windows, but it was too late.

“What the hell is this?” I asked as I leaned in closer.  “CrossDressingPoodles.com?  That’s sick!”

“We just stumbled across it,” Okie, the elder of the two, said, innocently.  “You know how Grandpa is always talking about getting a dog now that he’s retired?  We were . . . uh . . . looking for a pug for him.”

“Yeah,” Rocco said.  “We did it for Grandpa–that’s the ticket.”

I looked them in the eyes.  Like my sons, neither one of my cats has ever been a very good liar.  Why aren’t our schools teaching children to be creative these days?  How did I get away with sex, drugs and 3.2% beer when I was a teen?  Through thorough and rigorous training in the techniques of fiction.

 
Okie, going for the mouse.

“I’m disappointed in you two,” I said in my best more-in-sorrow-than-in-anger tone.

“Hey, you could have said something when mom had us spayed,” Okie snapped.

“Like what?  Remember, I was neutered too,” I replied.

“In more ways than one,” Rocco said out of the side of his mouth, sotto voce through his white whiskers.

“I heard that,” I said, but he just lifted his leg to lick his crotch. 

“Bet you wish you could do that,” Okie said with what I thought was a smirk on his face.

“I want you guys to erase your search history–now,” I said emphatically.  “I am not going to take the blame for the perverse crap you’re into.”

“Before you call it crap,” Rocco said, taking a break from his auto-eroticism, “remember what Freud said about polymorphous perversity.”


Freud:  Sometimes a chew toy is just a chew toy.

“I was never that much into him,” I said.  “All the budding psychoanalysts I knew in college just wanted to learn how to talk dirty to women in an intellectual way so they could get them into bed.”

“That’s your problem,” Okie said.  “You think that’s a bad thing.”

“No, I just found Thorstein Veblen more interesting.”


Thorstein Veblen

“Now there’s a guy who knew how to make up for low academic salaries,” Okie said.  “He basically screwed every faculty wife at Cornell, Yale and Stanford.”

“You forgot the University of Chicago and the University of Missouri, two schools that are dear to my heart,” I said.

 

“Anyway,” Rocco said, “I had a point back there before you guys took off on a tangent.  Freud posited . . . “

“Ooo–aren’t we intellectual today!” Okie said as he rolled on his back.

” . . . that we have the ability to gain sexual gratification outside socially normative sexual channels.”

“Who’s this ‘we’ you’re talking about,” I said with a critical tone.  “Freud wasn’t a veterinarian, you know.”

“Hey,” Rocco said sharply.  “Why should humans have all the fun?”

549 days ago Short URL Comments

Uncategorized

/////

27

Jul

Perimenopause: The Pause Before the Pause

Every woman will experience perimenopause during her life, unless she takes things into her own hands and has a sex-change operation.  What is perimenopause?  Is it the pause that refreshes?  No, that’s Coca-Cola, the carbonated soft drink that’s sold in more than 200 countries. 


Suggestive Coca-Cola advertisement featuring pre-perimenopausal female.

Is it the pause before a penalty kick in soccer?  No, that’s the paradinha (pronounced “Simon BO-li-var”) which is used to throw off a goalie’s timing.


Penalti com paradinha.

Even top-ranked doctors at the Mayo Clinic are unclear about perimenopause.  They say it’s the stage during which a woman’s body begins its transition to menopause, and that it can last anywhere from two to eight years, plus the first year after a woman’s last period.  Try that degree of precision on your wife sometime.

WIFE:  Hello?

HUSBAND:  Hi honey, I’m about to leave the office.

WIFE:  So should I start the butterfly leg of lamb with roasted red peppers and blanched asparagus with almonds?

HUSBAND:  Let’s see, if I make the 5:30 train I should be home anywhere from two to eight hours later.  Or it could take an hour longer, depending on my hormones.

WIFE:  (. . .)  I’m ordering Chinese.

When you do an image search on the internet for “perimenopause” you get some weird results.  Women pressing their temples in obvious distress, women hiding under the covers, women making little church-and-steeples with their hands while they contemplate how much time they’d have to serve under federal sentencing guidelines if they terminated one out of 2.3 children.


Dark glasses are a must-have fashion accessory for your arraignment!

I don’t claim to know much about perimenopause, other than what I’ve learned first hand and, like a latter-day Will Rogers, what I read on the internet.


Will Rogers:  “All I know’s what I read when I type ‘perimenopause’ into my search engine.”

Here for your peace of mind is a summary of the causes and symptoms of perimenopause, so you can spot them before someone you love advances on you with an unregistered firearm:

Hot flashes:  Women may complain of hot flashes during perimenopause, forgetting that heat is a good thing.  You’ve probably heard the phrase “more light than heat,” referring to something like a sparkler that produces a gaudy flash but little warmth, unlike a barrel of heating oil.  In order to avoid hot flashes, some doctors recommend that women forego coffee and alcohol.  That’s when things get really hot.


“You’ll take away my half-caf vanilla latte when you pry my cold dead fingers off my cup.”

Changing cholesterol levels:  During perimenopause, women may experience an increase in “bad” cholesterol and a decrease in “good” cholesterol, while ”indifferent” cholesterol just sits there like a bump on a log reading the paper or watching sports highlights over their shoulders.


“Good” vs. “Bad” cholesterol.  Sort of like professional wrestling between waxy steroid metabolites.

Changes in sexual function:  During perimenopause, sexual arousal and desire may change.  If a woman had a prior satisfactory history of sexual intimacy, but after the onset of perimenopause begins to reproduce asexually like some komodo dragons, consult a veterinarian, and be sure it’s one who doesn’t work at the Mayo Clinic.


“C’mon, give it a try.  I’m sick of the missionary position.”

Questions your doctor may ask you:  Be prepared for a number of nosy questions from your doctor, including the following:

  • How ’bout them Red Sox?
  • Do you have insurance?
  • We’re short of tongue depressors.  Is it all right if I use my Creamsicle stick?

Most importantly, you should not lose hope.  In just a few short years perimenopause will be over, with its wild mood swings, night sweats and hot flashes.

And then things get even worse.

550 days ago Short URL Comments

Uncategorized

/////

27

Jul

Born Too Soon: America’s Hottest High School Teachers!

Ho hum.  Another day, another female high school teacher e-mailing nude pictures of herself to one of her 15-year-old male students.  It’s a story that’s become all too familiar, like “Fireman Saves Tree-Climbing Kitten,” “Lottery Winner Now Destitute” and “Woman Stuck to Toilet Seat Freed.”


“Shagadelic, baby!”

Or else it’s a story about a high school English teacher having sex with one of her male students on a green shag rug.  Follow this link for a handy pocket guide to the recent history of female teacher/male high (and middle!) school liaisons.  This material will be on the final, which will count for half your grade. 

 
“I’d like to talk to you about your book report on ‘Great Expectations’–after class.”

The teachers who get caught propositioning male students are typically wholesome family women, according to interviews with neighbors.  Isn’t that always the case?  This is why I have repeatedly called for regular round-ups and preventive detention of wholesome family women, before another young man’s morals are corrupted.

As Henny Youngman used to say: “Take my algebra teacher–please!”

One teacher involved in an incident last year–the one on the shag rug, if you’re having trouble keeping track–was a “waifish, bespectacled” type.  Again, you fool with these women at your peril.  It’s why I support automated book checkout at my local library.  If you get too close to these hotties, you’ll get burned.


“Hot pants–huh!”

My question is not “What the hell’s going on in America’s high schools today?”  My question is “Where the hell were these teachers when I was in high school?”  Here is as close as I ever got to the torrid emotions that are apparently swirling just beneath the surface of America’s female high school teachers today. 

CAUTION:  The stories you are about to read may bring a blush to the cheek of the innocent.  And, as on Dragnet, the names have been changed to protect the innocent.

Sister Mary Clarice:  A self-styled “new sheriff in town”, this Precious Blood nun took over the glee club of Sacred Heart Elementary School in 1960, determined to clean house and crack down on a hard-core group of depraved boys who refused to sing along to “O Sanctissima” and told “elephant” jokes in the back row!  (Sample–Q: How can you tell if there’s been an elephant in your refrigerator?  A:  The footprints in the Jello.)  During a fire drill she caught me talking in line and grabbed my arm in a manner that is recommended by the Kama Sutra as a sure-fire means of bringing your lover to heights of ecstasy never-before experienced–and she wasn’t even my home room teacher!


“What are you boys doing back there?”

Mrs. Kennealy:  This grey-haired woman single-handedly stopped a fifth-grade crime wave that included consensual “pass out” sessions in the cloak room where students held their breath and allowed classmates to squeeze them until they lost consciousness.  I betrayed the trust she had placed in me as Class President in an effort to shed my goody-goody image by asking Scott Lilja and Tommy Dickman to teach me how to give someone the finger; she caught me in mid-bird-flip and whacked my left middle finger with a metal-edged ruler, producing a scar that embarrasses me at business lunches to this day.


Mamie Eisenhower and Bib, the Michelin Man:  Mash ‘em up!

Ida Cruzang:  This Mamie Eisenhower look-alike killed my interest in math forever with the hide-and-go seek technique she employed to store used Kleenex tissues; one up a sleeve, another slipped discreetly under a bra strap, etc.  After a two-hour mid-term exam at the height of cold and flu season she’d look like Bibendum, the Michelin man, in a floral print dress.


“So you’re saying Andrew Marvel’s ‘To his Coy Mistress’ is about–darn it, I can’t get this thing unsnapped!”

Mrs. Riestang:  This sultry-voiced English teacher was familiar to me from summers at the Country Club pool, where I was a part-time lifeguard.  When I was assigned to her creative writing class senior year, she praised my lame post-nuclear bomb survival story “Applejack” with words that, in retrospect, were a thinly-veiled attempt at seduction. 

“I think you need to work harder to develop the female character,” she said as she leaned over my desk, a potent potpourri of stale cigarette smoke and Elizabeth Arden perfume emanating from her every pore.  “Also, you’ve got some kind of Sloppy Joe goober on your lip.”

550 days ago Short URL Comments

Uncategorized

////

26

Jul

The Graduate: Chelsea Clinton Edition

A Kenyan man offered 30 cows and 40 goats for Chelsea Clinton’s hand in marriage.  The Boston Herald.

OFFICE OF THE FORMER FIRST DAUGHTER

Dear Godwin Kipkemoi Chepkurgor:

Thank you so much for your kind offer of 30 cows and 40 goats for my hand in marriage.  Seriously, I was registered at Bed, Bath & Beyond for twelve fruit bowls, and had completely forgotten about the goats–thanks for the heads-up!

Nonetheless, as you may not have heard living in a subsistence oral culture, I am currently engaged to marry Mark Mezvinsky this Saturday and am thus generally unavailable to marry someone who burns dung for cooking and warmth.  But I really appreciate the offer!

Warm personal regards,

Chelsea Clinton


Godwin Kipkemoi Chepkurgor:  Lookin’ good in the ‘hood.

Dear Chelsea:

Thanks for your email.  I am totally “down” with you wanting to “play the field”.  I myself like to do so as well.  Did you know polygamy is legal in Kenya?  You would only be like, my second or third wife, I’ve lost count.  But you would occupy a special place in my heart, next to the left ventricle.  And please be assured that I have never, ever offered more than 40 goats for a wife, as a matter of principle.  Chicks can really get an attitude when you cross that 39-goat threshold!

By the way, is it true you were named after a Joni Mitchell song?  That’s not a problem, but it would have been better if you’d been named after “Chelsea Bridge” by Billy Strayhorn–much classier, all things considered.  But I guess we’re not responsible for our tacky parents, are we? 

The billy and nanny goats are going at it tonight–makes me think of you (*sigh*).

Yours ’til Niagra Falls!

Godwin


Billy Strayhorn

Dear Godwin:

I think things are getting, uh, a little personal in our emails.  I hope I’ve been clear–I am going to marry someone who can keep me in the style to which I’ve become accustomed as the daughter of a mater and pater who, while they may have been Arkansas state government employees at one time, have now received multi-million dollar book advances from major New York publishing houses!


Paula Jones:  Another Arkansas state government employee.

So it is time, sadly, for you and I to break off our electronic correspondence.  Have you tried Barbara Pierce Bush?  Her twin sister is married, but she’s still available.

Cordially,

Chelsea Clinton


Barbara Pierce Bush

Dearest Chelsea–

Thanks for the tip on the sole remaining unmarried Bush twin!  Personally, I am interested in collecting one of each of the first daughters–you, La Bushette, maybe an Obama, a Susan Ford, a Doro Bush–even Julie Nixon if the price is right!  By the way, do you have change for a 40-goat note?  Foreign exchange restrictions in a Kenya are a b***ch!

Yours ’till cats kill mountains,

Godwin


Susan Elizabeth Ford

Godwin:

Please understand that while my father may have been the first black president, he still played the saxophone like Boots Randolph, not Charlie Parker.  I don’t mean to seem stand-offish, but I’m calling the Secret Service, which as you may know protects even daughters of former presidents.  I would stick to the Bushes if I were you. 

Very truly yours,

Chelsea Clinton


Boots Randolph:  Terminally unhip.

Dearest Chelsea:

Boots Randolph–get out of town!  “Yakety Sax” is my favorite, bar none, of all time.  Perhaps your father can play at our wedding!

551 days ago Short URL Comments

Uncategorized

////

25

Jul

Motor City Pillow Patrol

Detroit police prevented a pillow fight Saturday, confiscating pillows.  Associated Press


“Look under that chintz sham!”

It was Saturday, the most dangerous night of the week.  I waited for my partner, a green rookie named Lew Tompkin, to get in on the passenger side of our cruiser, then we headed out for an eight-hour shift through the dark underbelly of the Motor City.

“How long have you been on the force?” Tompkin asked.

“Nineteen years, ten months, two weeks and three days,” I said grimly.  “Or to put it another way, five years, one month, one week and four days until retirement.  Not that I’m counting or anything.”

“You must really know the city,” he said, all wide-eyed innocence. 

“You’re looking at the murder capital of America,” I said evenly.


“It was one of those wedge-shaped TV pillows . . .”

“I thought St. Louis . . . “

“We kicked St. Louis’s ass, kid.  2,289 violent manslaughters to 2,198.”

“Golly,” Tompkin said.  I had to think hard to remember back when I was as naive as him.  “So–you think we’ll see any bloodshed tonight?” he asked.

I took a sip of my Tim Horton’s coffee, trying to bring myself up to his level of interest with a jolt of caffeine.  “Don’t think so.  Sarge has got us on a tougher beat tonight.”

I gave the rook a sidewise glance.  It was fun to watch his face turn as white as a coho’s underbelly, which is a much lighter shade than the city’s dark underbelly.  He was silent for a moment.  “Tougher than . . . murder?” he asked finally, gulping a bit as he spoke.

 ”Um-hmm,” I hummed, nonchalantly.  “Tonight we’re on the home furnishings beat.”

You could have heard a parking ticket drop in the cruiser he was so quiet.  I noticed he was looking off into the distance–probably thinking about his family.  “You married?” I asked.

“Yeah,” he said, sounding distrait, whatever that means.  “Baby on the way too.”

“That’s too bad–but it’s what you sign up for when you join the Detroit PD.”

His lips twisted into a thin, downward sloping wrinkle of resignation, sort of like a teeter-totter with a curly-cue on the lower end.  “I know,” he said.  “It comes with the territory, right?”

I had just finished agreeing with him when I saw a man dart down an alley, a DreamKuddle huggable security pillow under his arm.

“Let’s roll,” I said.  I whipped the cruiser around so that the passenger side was nearest the sidewalk.  “Hop out and cover the street.”

He did as he was told and I tore around the block and up the other end of the alley.  We had the guy trapped.  I turned on my loudspeaker to give him fair warning.  “Drop the pillow and come out with your hands up,” I announced.

Nothing moved, and the only sound was the skittering screech of cat’s claws on a metal trash can lid.  I tried to keep still, but my heart was pounding loudly against the inside of my chest, like a beat borrowed from Eminem, the city’s only remaining profitable business.


Detroit’s principal employer.

I tried not to blink, but in the time it took to bat my eyelashes a man jumped out from behind an empty appliance box and ran towards my partner, swinging his pillow wildly, like a soft cuddly machete.

“Look out!” I yelled, but it was too late.

“Mmmph!” I heard the kid scream as the soft buddy pillow hit him flush in the face.  I pulled my firearm–a door snake draft stopper–but the perp was beyond my range.

I knelt over my fallen comrade and cradled his head in my hands.

“You okay?” I asked.  His mouth was filled with cozy fleece, and the impress of the whimsical bunny design was splattered across his face.

“I guess.  My wife is going to go crazy.”

“You may want to buy her a couple of heavy-duty, hypo allergenic throw pillows–for your peace of mind when you’re out all night.”

“Where do you get them?”

I sighed, exasperated by the restraints our society puts on law-abiding citizens.  “They’re illegal, but I can get them for you.” 

He was not just hurt but angry now.  “When are the pillow control groups ever going to get the message?” Tompkin said, as he looked up into my eyes.  ”When pillows are outlawed, only outlaws will have pillows.”

552 days ago Short URL Comments

Uncategorized

////

23

Jul

Your Work-Life Advisor

Balancing your life and your work can be difficult.  If you don’t work, you probably won’t eat, in which case you will die and won’t have any life!  On the other hand, you can work so much you won’t have a life even while you’re living.  Your Work-Life Advisor is here to help people like you, several of whom wrote in with questions this month.


“See?  When I touch the screen it leaves a little oily fingerprint!”

Dear Work-Life Advisor:

My wife who I will call “June” is in “network security.”  I don’t pretend to understand what she does, but every job she gets they take advantage of her.   She works 12-hour days and is “on call” all the time to fix computer bugs, even in the middle of the night.

I have heard about a French fad called the “enlarge a twah” in which a man and a woman expand their relationship to take on a third person who makes their love life more fulfilling.  I am wondering whether this is legal in the U.S., as I feel “June” is putting her work before her life.

E.J. “Bud” Mack, Cape Girardeau, Mo.


Oo-la-lah, those cra-zee French!

Dear Bud:

I believe the term you are referring to is menage a trois, which means a mixture of three people for job-sharing and romantic purposes.  It is technically legal only in Louisiana, a state whose laws are based on the Napoleonic Code, but authorities in other states tend to look the other way when they see it, usually because it grosses them out.  If you were to find another woman who is an expert in “network security” you could perhaps work out a graveyard shift arrangement so that each woman could alternate with you in bed.  Bonne chance!

  
“What this country needs is a thrifty and industrious working class!”

Dear Mr./Ms. Work-Life Advisor:

I have a really creepy old boss who is not good at motivating people.  If you do something wrong he makes you stay until you get it right.  This often makes me late for roller derby, which isn’t fair to the other girls as I am one of only three “blockers” on our team.

Last Friday I mentioned to my boss that people might appreciate him more if he used “carrots” instead of “sticks” around the office.  He looked at me and said “Perhaps you’re right.”  I was feeling pretty good about myself until Monday morning when he brought in a plate of sliced vegetables and a sort of ranch dressing dip and put it in the employee lounge.

Work-Life Advisor, I did not mean what I said literally.  How can I get through to this man who is not “up to date” on a lot of the current workplace slang?

Evelyn Wanamaker, Wilkes-Barre, Pa.


Yum–sort of.

Dear Evelyn:

What a wonderful work-life balance you have achieved!  I admire young women like you who refuse to be “pigeonholed” into a dead-end job when there are so many fulfilling activities available outside of the office!

That said, I think your boss will admire your leadership qualities and perhaps even consider you for a promotion if you will spell out in a straightforward, bullet-point memo what you are seeking instead of carrots–chips, honey-roasted peanuts, pork rinds or whatever.  There is nothing that contributes to workplace satisfaction like high-salt, high-fat snackfoods instead of boring vegetables.


“Two on one?  Kinky!”

Hello Work-Life Advisor:

I have been a long-time reader of your column but have never felt the need to write–until now.  My wife is very domineering and is always telling me I shouldn’t stay late at work, I should be home with her and the kids.  She says “Don’t be a Billy Big-Deal–you have a family!”  That is all well and good but I am a firefighter and cannot just leave my job when she calls and says she wants to go to book group to discuss “Love’s Tender Heartstrings” or some other mushy novel.


Secret Odd Fellows initiation rites.

Last night she called me on my cell phone just as I was wrapping up a talk on proper installation of smoke detectors to the Odd Fellows Club to say she was going out for a glass of wine with her friend Susan, could I come home and watch the kids.  Ms. Work-Life Advisor, I became really flustered and completely forgot my conclusion, which was a good joke I had heard about a priest, a rabbi and a lady snake-charmer.


“So the priest and the rabbi take the previously approved exit route, and the lady snake charmer gets fried.”

How do I get my wife to understand that while family is important I have to put food on the table and this sometimes entails community outreach efforts at night?

Wayne Goshen, Chillicothe, Ohio


Waiting for him to call. 

Dear Wayne:

I think your wife is on to you–you have your eye on that big promotion to Fire Marshall!  Every housewife needs a break from her little carpet-creepers every now and then, however, and oftentimes all that is required is a “heads-up” so that your wife can know when to put dinner on the table.  Just a simple phone call–”Honey, I am in the middle of getting an orange tabby cat down from this tree, there we go, nice kitty.  I’ll be home in about ten minutes.”  You’ll find your wife in a much better mood when she can plan confidently around your schedule.


Her defense mechanism.

Ms. Work-Life Advisor:

I believe it is my husband Bud who wrote the first letter in today’s column, but I will deal with him later.  As Bud says, I am constantly on call from work with problems caused by users of System A who receive errors that Remote System B does not accept their yadda-yadda whatevers.  Frankly, after 10 p.m., I couldn’t care less.  I have started bring small bags of potato chips to bed–usually one barbecue and one sour cream and onion–and whenever I get one of these “urgent” calls I open the bag, crumple it and say “Sorry–we’ve got a bad connection–I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”  Then I hang up and eat the chips.

Bud says it is unsanitary to bring chips to bed as it will attract cockroaches.  I have to laugh at that one–you should see the den on Tuesday morning after he stays up late watching Monday Night Football.


“Hey–no snacks in bed!”

My question, Work-Life Advisor, is this:  I would not be buying the 5-bag snackpack of chips if not for my job-related “issues.”  I would be buying the large economy size at a much lower cost-per-chip.  Can I deduct the difference as an employment-related expense such as tools, union dues, and mileage?

June Mack, Cape Girardeau, Mo.


Employees pretending to be satisfied with their jobs.

Dear June:

I believe you are engaging in a little bit of “deception,” both of yourself and your company.  There is no need for you to eat potato chips to duck phone calls–people avoid each other every day, all day long, eating healthy foods such as carrots and celery.  I would suggest you contact Evelyn Wanamaker of Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, as she has a tray of left-over crudites that may still be fresh.

554 days ago Short URL 1 Comment

Uncategorized

//////

Blog at WordPress.com.
Theme: Esquire by Matthew Buchanan.

Follow

Get every new post delivered to your Inbox.

Join 73 other followers