While we are on the subject of self-important religious fanatics:
I, personally, don't give a damned who you SAY you are. Instead, I DO give a damn about your actions.
When I was working at Home Depot as a cashier, I had a day off - and I was standing in a check out line as a customer.
I wondered what was taking so long to ring these people out, because I knew the cashier personally, and I knew that she usually worked much faster than that.
I was the 3rd person in line. There was a small lady that was basically going off on the cashier. Mind you, she should have NOT been yelling at the cashier for a misunderstanding on the price of an item, which was the customer's fault in the first place.
HOWEVER....} I could see the front end manager walking towards the scene, but before she got there, the collared priest that was standing directly behind her (who thought he had had enough of her cursing) clutched his chest and said:
"Oh, Ma'am! Excuse me! You don't understand! I'm Father Fox!"
This little firecracker of a lady snapped her head in his direction, and, without missing a beat, in Linda Blair-style, she spewed in his direction:
"I DON'T GIVE A GOD DAMN IF YOU ARE MOTHER GOOSE!"
It was at that moment that she realized that she was going to have to shift into overdrive. Until the front end manager reached the scene of the incident, this little upset customer then divided her wrath between the shocked priest and the unfortunate cashier, equally cursing them BOTH out! I was standing behind them, cackling like an entire hen house! What a gem!
The Power of PEE! Last night, while attenting the Air & Art Festival in the clean little St. Louis 'burb of Webster Groves, MO, I had 2 beers. By *no* means am I an active beer drinker, but I do like to have a beer or a glass of wine while schmoozing. Even though this event was less than 8 miles from our home, I decided to use one of the available Porta Potties before I left the venue. I had used one of these facilities a couple hours earlier in the evening, and I noted that for such a large crowd, the waiting time in line wasn't more than a couple short minutes. There was an adequate number of potties per attendee. When I approached the bank of 15 potties (and there were probably a total of 45 for the entire venue), I headed straight for one of the johns before I noticed that, had I continued, I would have been butting in front of an uncomfortably long line. Because I had not seen a line earlier in the evening, I wasn't expecting a line to be formed at this time, either. I noticed my own faux pas before anybody had a chance to speak up and say something about my error, and I politely stepped to the back of the line. And I waited.... And I waited. After an uncomfortably long wait, I noted that out of the 15 green and red 'occupied / unoccupied' indicators on the doors, *all* of the indicators were 'red = occupied', with the lone exception of the first and last potties in this string of 15. The other 13 pottied had the red 'occupied' indicator showing. Anybody that has attended functions with strips of these potties will know that you usually can hear the doors of the potties banging at a consistent rate, and the waiting line continues to creep slowly forward. On this particular evening, only the first and last door saw any action at all. The 13 doors in the middle had NOT MOVED in the 10 minutes that I was standing in line. After making a few comments such as, "I have seen MUCH longer potty lines at Mardi Gras move MUCH Faster!", I decided to take action. Why the Hell the other 15 people in front of me didn't do something about the situation before I arrived sure beats the Hell out of me! I was dressed in my normal garb. I told the man standing behind me, and the sheepish woman standing in FRONT of me, "Hold my place in line! I'm going to check doors!" They laughed to see such a sport! (Remember: I'm a nurse - I've seen every shape, size and color of everybody's everything!) I went to the strip of potties, and I skipped the first potty. I knew a small girl just walked into that one, and it was being used as it should be. FOR THE NEXT 12 potties, I opened the door WIDE, looked inside, and exclaimed to the waiting crowd behind me, "Unoccupied! NEXT!" (opened the next door)... "Unoccupied! Next!", and I continued the process for 12 doors. I knew the last potty was being used approperiately, so when I got to the 12th EMPTY potty, I flung the door open and said, "Occupied? Nope! This one is MINE!" The waiting crowd gasped, then laughed - and then lunged forward to claim their potty. Hindsight being 20 / 20, I firmly believe that, in a moment when no one was looking, a prankster turned all the indicators to 'occupied', just to watch the people staning in line, holding their pee! Why will I forever be the first person that 'gets it', and exclaims, "Nope! That Emperor STILL ain't wearing no clothes!" GEEZ! Such Sheeple! :D
Global Foods and Jay's Foods are the 2 biggest International food markets in the St. Louis area, but we have quite at least 8 other international food markets and many culture-specific stores in the area. Global Foods is about 3 miles from our home, and we go there quite often. At Global, for example, there is an isle dedicated to each ethnicity, with some isles sharing more than one culture. (They have the specific flags flying above the isle, along with the names of each country: Poland, Bosnia, Germany, Mexico, Japan, China, India, Russia, and several more. Many of the foods have their entire labels written in the native language of that particular country, with no English translation on the package. Even though we definitely have our favorite foods from around the globe, each time we shop there, we make a point to get a few of our favorites- and also a few things that 'I have no idea what it is, but I'm going to find out!" With very rare and few exceptions (like a Balut egg!), I will try any and everything. I have a friend that was born without arms - not even stumps - and he has lived his entire adult life alone, with no assistive devices. How does he do it? He never lost the flexibility of his lower limbs that a baby has naturally. (Ever see a baby gleefully sucking on his toes???) This man can comb his hair with a part so straight that is scares me, give himself an impeccably clean shave, button his shirt - AND his pants, play guitar, and drive a standard car with no alterations, whatsoever, etc, etc, etc. When I asked him, "how do you do it?" He told me that if he wanted to remain independent, he had no choice but to maintain the flexibility that we all had since we were babies.. Keeping the senses and the brain equally as malleable prevents one from getting "OLD". I'm not talking about 'old' as the general time that anything that has been on the face of this earth, I'm talking about "OLD", as in constricted, sheltered and narrow-minded, and all-too-willing to defend such a mental status. At 45 yrs. old, there is a good chance that I will NOT become one of those people. :D
(If you want BOTH mental and physical Calisthenics, go to the St. Louis City Museum - but wear a good pair of tennis shoes, and it would behoove you to buy a quality pair of knee pads, and have them strapped on when you walk in the door!) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balut_(egg)
Now on display in the Liniean House at the Botanical Gardens is the Devil's Tongue, the 'little brother' of the huge Corpse Flower (scientific name: Amorphophallus titanum, translated, means "Giant Misshaped Penis")
The 'Devil's Tongue's botanical name is "Amorphophallus paeoniifolius" - translated, it is "Misshaped Penis Elephant Foot" !!! (The bright yellow 'stem' of the flower IS the actual flowers of this plant, which are actually very tiny, yellow flowers for such a huge, smelly - interesting - plant.
A friend asked me, "I have to ask; what do they smell like? Are they floral at all?"
My answer - characteristically lengthy, of course!: Floral? Nope. More like something from The Bog of Eternal Stench (from the David Bowie movie "The Labyrinth" !)
I never got a whiff of THIS one, because it was freshly open.
Having had maggots eat half of my right foot off then I was 4 yrs. old, I can tell you that, if you are standing down-wind of the Devil's Tongue's cousin, "The Corpse Flower", the odor - and TRUE odor - smells like rotten, dead flesh. Much like the same smell as if you pass road kill that has been on the road for several days. There is a difference between road kill that is STARTING to smell, and one that has had a chance to cook in the sun for a few days.
If I had to make a choice, I would rather smell the one that has cooked a bit longer than one that is freshly rotten. The 'freshly rotten' smell is much more acidic, and stomach-turning for a good reason.
Mother Nature made us revolt - actually get nauseous - at the smell of rotten food to keep us from eating bad things that would make us sick.
I had a BIG, BUTCH nurses's aide that worked under me when I worked as a nurse. I was in a double patient's room, cleaning up a lady that, well, made 'the mess of the century'. The privacy curtain was pulled around her for obvious reasons.
This big, butch, straight man cam in to care for the non-messed lady, and suddenly, I heard him yell to her, "I'll be right back!", as he bolted for the door. Then, I heard horrible vomiting noises coming from the hallway.
Bud came back into the room, and apologized to both me and the patient he was caring for, by saying, "I'm sorry.... I don't know what hit me, but I know I had to get sick QUICK!"
The clincher: Bud was born with no sense of smell **AT ALL**.
It seems that this 'if we smell something bad, we vomit' response is such a instinctual response that hie consciously didn't have to know that there was a hideous odor in the room for the response to work!
You see, I KNEW Bud had no sense of smell, and I was testing him to see if the 'bad smell - vomit' response worked on a person who was not aware that a bad smell is in the air.
When I TOLD him that I knew he would respond that way, he dragged me out in the hallway, and started playfully beating me about the head and neck!
Since that time, I dated a guy that also had no sense of smell. He lived alone, and was seldom home, so the trash in his trash can (in the kitchen) built up slowly. On several occasions, I would go over to visit him, and when I opened the door, a 'bad trash' smell would nearly knock me over. Before I had a chance to say something to him, he would tell me, "I don't know what's wrong, Michael, but I have been feeling nauseous. all day!" I would tell him, "Bill, it's time to take the trash out." I also had to tell him when to change his bathroom towels, and I finally put him on a schedule to change his towels AND his trash. He was a VERY clean man, with a very clean house, but slowly accumulating trash and a one-man towel can be stinky in just a few days!
I have my own water bug story that looked something right of Arachnophobia. Personally, if I see a spider in my house, I'll let him go about his way. **IF** I wake up in the middle of the night, and he's on my face, it's all over for Mr. Spider.
I lived in a 2 bedroom apt. just a block from Hardee's. I would read a book - or read the newspaper - and lay it down beside the bed on the floor before I went to sleep at night.
I am a VERY light sleeper.
I woke up in the middle of the night one night by thousands of little 'tick.... tick... tick' sounds. I rolled over and flipped on the light on the nightstand.
The wall that wasn't more than 3 ft. from my bed, from floor to ceiling was COVERED with huge water bugs! Those bugs were crawling down that wall, across the floor, and the 'tick... tick.... tick....' sound that I heard was the thousands of bugs crossing the newspaper that I had laid on the floor just a few inches from the bed - and they were headed in my direction!
(That room had been an 'add-on', and right at where the door of the 'new' room met the older structure, the builder didn't do a good job of closing that gap!)
I had 2 bedrooms, and honestly, I got up and ran out of that room, closed the door, and I honestly believe that I never went back in that room again until the day I moved out of that apt, several months later.
(Is there some connection between Quincy and HUGE waterbugs????)
I have caught one too many whiffs of the Ambercrombie and Fitch backlash, so I decided to do some research for myself.
BEFORE I did my Google searches to learn what the fuss was all about, I looked at the thumbnails of the people who commented on these backlashing articles.
(Yep. Even as a fellow fat boy, I am willing to take sides with the clothing company. I noticed that probably 90% of the thumbnails of the complaining people were of fat people. GURL! You didn't have to tell me twice! I KNEW that the complainers would be fat people. I was just doing my homework.)
One comment under these articles said it best:
"If a clothing company wants to have a certain image, let them have it. they sell jeans and T shirts and there are more than enough other labels that carry up to xxx if your comfortable wearing that size. Quit blaming others. Everybody is such a winner these days."
Did you read the "QUIT BLAMING OTHERS" sentence? If you want to wear skinny brands - GET SKINNY. If your Toxic Hell - er..... I mean Taco Bell - is more important to you than being skinny, then, to that I say, "Chow down, Mrs. Brown!" but stop showing the world your own insecurities by poking at others who are doing something that you allow to make yourself miserable.
Dr. Phil says that such actions are the same as saying aloud, "There is something in that guy (company!) that I can't stand in myself!"
You're making it blatantly obvious.
Yes. I have both Ambercrombie and Fitch jeans, AND their other company - Hollister - in my closet. These are $70 jeans.
When I could fit in those jeans, I was hot as Hell. And quite frankly, I am hot as Hell in the other brands that I wear, too.
It's not about a stuck-up brand, people. It's about your own insecurities. If I was either of these companies, I wouldn't change a thing. They're doing it right. The complainers, on the other hand - not so much.
I know that this blog entry isn't going to win me any Miss Congeniality awards, but to quote Julia Sugarbaker in Designing Women (in the famed "The Night The Lights Went Out in Georgia" rant):
"Yes, and I gather from your comments there are a couple of other things you don't know, Marjorie. For example, you probably didn't know that Suzanne was the only contestant in Georgia pageant history to sweep every category except congeniality, and that is not something the women in my family aspire to anyway." The story is better told by Julia, herself:
Another quote, this one from Sophia on The Golden Girls: "Jealousy is an UGLY THING, Dorothy - and so are you in anything backless!"
Oh, the joys of both Erb's Palsy and Gunstock Deformity:
I have woke up in the morning, and found a DEAD arm on my own chest. Thinking, "Who the HELL is in bed with me?", with my left arm, I pick up this strange arm, and then I still can't determine who the arm belongs to. I drop the offending limb, and it lands with a LOUD THUMP! on my chest, knocking the wind out of myself. THEN, I get brave and starting at the fingers, I follow the arm up to the shoulder, before I finally make the determination that it IS ATTACHED TO ME!
After I have a little laugh at how silly I have been, I get out of bed. Er...... I TRY to get out of bed (Ever try to get out of bed with just one arm when you're old??) After several failed attempts, all of which resulted me falling back into the bed and landing face-up on my back, exasperated, with all the energy and determination that I have remaining in my body, I get up as much momentum as possible, and I fling myself from the bed into a standing position.
THEN.....OH, THEN......
the offending right arm - still very dead to the world - absolutely no sensation AT ALL - comes flying back at me. Gunstock Deformity leaves a permanent, very noticeable 'crook' in my right arm that can't be straightened out. This bent arm can give me a very deadly aim that I don't necessarily welcome in my life. My floppy, but crooked arm aims my hand in the right direction: hand punches myself in the crotch. It is at that point that,. while writhing in pain, and trying to catch my breath from that searing pain that I decide that I could remain lying flat on my back on the bed, with BOTH arms by my side until I regain both sensation and what functionality that I have left back in my right arm before I try to get out of bed again!
(Embarrassingly, this has happened to me at least 3 or 4 times in my life, and I think my 'fun' is far from over!) :D
