Author: ME

And That’s How You Accuse a Nun of Being a Terrorist

ME Overly simple thoughts , , ,

From time to time, I like to let people know that I’m just a normal everyday kind of person, despite the amazing fame that all of you must imagine me to have. I mean, I actually do have an amazing kind of celebrity status, but it’s not for anything that I can actually tell people about. Just let it go.

So when I want my legions of minions to see the human side of the dog-and-pony show that is me, all I have to do is toss out an embarrassing story to let them see that I have an all-too-human flaw or two. Or three. Let’s go with two. Plus, my lawyer really thinks it will help sway the parole committee if I own up to my mistakes and show remorse. If I ever need to come up for parole, that is. Better to be prepared, the way things are going these days.

In story number one, I went shopping with my daughter. We perused the racks and I headed to the register with a really, really blue knit-weight short-sleeved dress. It wasn’t all that pretty, ESPECIALLY being Smurf-blue, but it was marked way down and I thought it could make a good swimsuit cover or something to throw on to chase the garbage men down the street while rolling our overloaded trashcan behind me. We laid our items on the counter for the saleswoman to ring up when my daughter said, “Mommy? Why are you buying that dress? I thought you had to wear pants to work so you could fight off the inmates whenever they start a riot?” (It’s important to know that yes, my child was old enough to have really clear diction and a great vocal pitch, two things which the saleswoman REALLY appreciated at this time.)

“I’m only buying it because it’s on clearance. You know, it’s to wear around the house and stuff. I’d NEVER be seen wearing that dress out in public. I mean, seriously, is there even a name for that color?” I scoffed.

Please tell me you see where this is going. Yup. The saleswoman was wearing the dress. The exact dress. The one I had just declared not fit to be seen in. That one. Apparently she gets a discount for shopping there. Complimenting her on how the shade of blue really brought out her eyes did nothing to make her overlook my comment.

Sadly, that is nowhere near close to the worst thing I’ve done to humiliate myself publicly. The worst thing (well, the worst thing I’ve done this year, and yes, as a matter of fact, I do know we’re not even to the end of the first week) involves calling Homeland Security on a woman with a suspicious-looking lump under her dress that I have to say ANYONE could really easily have mistaken for a kilo or two of uncut cocaine but instead was just her hunchback. She was actually an elderly nun and she probably got that hunchback from decades of bending over to wipe little orphans’ runny noses in the tuberculosis ward of a Zambian hut hospital but that’s not what it looked like when I was following her through the mall, waving down idle security guards and telling them to go get the feds while I kept an eye on her. Apparently I’m quite the credible witness because those guys tackled her like she had the secret rocket formula and was smuggling it out of Oppenheimer’s lab.

Tell me that doesn't look like the same woman who cut in front of you at WalMart.

How was I supposed to know she wasn’t a notorious coke mule? Like anyone (but me) would think to accuse a nun. And excuse me for wondering why a nun is even shopping in the mall. Aren’t their clothes provided for them, like Maria’s dress in Sound of Music? More importantly, why in the name of all that’s holy was she wearing that hideous blue dress?

Apparently, This Is An Election Year. I’m Running for Coroner.

ME Overly simple thoughts , , ,

It doesn't really look like it, but these two are probably dead. Maybe. I don't know.

I’ve said it before, I’m not really up on current events. I try to pay attention if some whole region of a small country was wiped out by a killer storm and I really do try to make sure I know just a teensy bit about the newest bacteria that’s going to destroy us all if we catch it from touching the handle of a shopping cart.

One flaw in my personality that I really do not feel bad about is politics. I am vaguely aware that we have a President. I know his name, I know his wife is a lovely woman who’s been ripped apart for trying to get kids to exercise. I know he has two kids but I couldn’t pick their faces out in a crowded elevator, a fact that in my mind already makes the Obamas Parents of the Year. That’s pretty much the extent of my knowledge on politics because I Just. Don’t. Care. Most of our government is controlled by a network of people who spend millions of dollars to snag a job that pays less than $500,000 a year, which right off the bat tells you something is going on.

But here in my hometown, there is one campaign that I watch eagerly every election year by following the candidates’ platforms and listening for any hint of scandal from their respective war rooms. It’s the coroner.

Yes, we still elect our coroners in this state. I don’t know, maybe your state does, too. But little known fact about my state (and maybe your state)…YOU DON’T HAVE TO BE A DOCTOR TO BE THE CORONER.

Yup. Probably stemming from a shortage of doctors that were less than a two-day horse ride away, but you don’t have to be the doctor to legally declare someone dead. And that, my friends, keeps me awake at night. What if some backhoe driver wins the election and declares me prematurely dead just because they’re having a little trouble waking me up? What if I’m in a car wreck and the coroner is actually a pizza delivery guy and he tells them, “Bag her up. She’s a goner.”

My real concern is the fact that a lot of would-be coroneratorial candidates are actually funeral home owners, which on the surface would make sense. They see a lot of dead people, and not just in the creepy way like that kid in the movie. But doesn’t anyone else see the conflict of interest here? THESE PEOPLE MAKE MONEY OFF OF DEAD PEOPLE. We don’t need them drumming up business by being called to the scene to declare someone dead. They’ll be calling the time of death from across the Walmart parking lot, just to pay off their kids’ braces.

That’s why I’m running for coroner on the Let’s Not Be Too Hasty platform. I’m so squeamish it will takes days for me to declare you dead, because I’m going to wait until you start to smell and flies hover around you before I’m willing to get close enough to check. I’ll just sit way over here and if you haven’t moved (and your left eyeball falls out from the decay), I’ll know. I wonder how much coroners get paid.

Rabies Isn’t an STD

ME Overly simple thoughts , , ,

I don't care what he tells you, you'd better use protection.

I have already explained that a large part of being a writer involves looking up really stupid stuff on the internet. I seriously don’t know where Hemingway got his ideas since the world wide web didn’t exist when he was hammering away on the old Royal. That must have been some really awesome Cuban rum he was always drinking, although I’ll admit that with the right number of mojitos I can become wordily inspired, too.

So there I was, researching stuff online and one thing led to another which led to an asinine video which led me to have to Google “sexually transmitted rabies.” We don’t have Dish Network at my house, don’t take this from me.

And here’s what I found out. Yes, rabies can be sexually transmitted. Between two people, stupid, not by having sex with raccoons. But I also discovered a different article that says no, it cannot be transmitted sexually. (I did learn that it can be transmitted by donating your organs if you die from rabies, which sadly happens a lot more often than I want to think about.) Apparently, there hasn’t been any real consensus yet on getting rabies by doing the nasty, either with an infected human or an infected woodland creature. You have been warned.

All of that life altering confusion made me really sad because I tend to rely on the internet for a lot of drastically important information like how much money I have in the bank and how long it’s going to be until the delivery guy shows up with my pizza. I also rely on the internet to tell me which candidate is being the least stupid this week. And I can’t even find out if having sex with a redneck who was bitten by a contagious squirrel is going to kill me?

I was going to suggest for a second that someone should be policing the internet to make sure it isn’t lying to me, but then I remembered that Congress is trying to get all Nazi-Fahrenheit-451 and censor the internet. I won’t stand for that since there is no way a possibly-Republican government censored internet is going to let me Google the phrase “riding a unicycle naked” for my next book.

There Goes My Resolution Not to Be a Bitch

ME Overly simple thoughts , , ,

I really wanted to be a better person this year, but two things happened. First, I woke up and accidentally dropped my toothbrush in the toilet, and of course the toothbrush stores are closed today so I’ve been walking around the house swishing toothpaste and club soda together to try to get my mouth clean. I’m trying really hard not to take it as a sign that 2012 is going to suck camel ass.

The second thing that happened was I stumbled on this music video that actually had a catchy tune, if I needed a playlist of songs to listen to while bludgeoning people to death. It was like staring at someone who forgot to put his pants on. You’re staring and you know it’s wrong, but oh well it’s the most interesting thing you’ve seen all day.

And there, at the end of the video…an advertisement. I’m all prepared for an ad for iTunes or where I can download this band’s music. Nope. The best advertising fail ever just happened on a song called “Vampire Rock Anthem – Live Forever.”

I don't know Disney, what do YOU think a vampire might do with one more day?

I shudder to think what hordes of vampires might do on Space Mountain, especially since Disney is INVITING them there. And the Baptists were afraid of Gay Days. You ain’t seen sin and carnage until the undead jump in line at the Dumbo ride.

New Year’s Revolutions

ME Overly simple thoughts , , ,

That on a triple word score still won't buy you a cup of coffee.

You know, creating a whole list of stuff you’re going to change about yourself in the coming year is kind of pointless. You’re what, middle aged? And you’re still needing to improve yourself? Why are you still even trying?

Instead of making the typical resolutions that don’t last long enough for the ink to dry on the back of the Arby’s receipt I wrote them on, I’ve decided that for 2012 I’m going to make the rest of the world bend to my will. I’m just fine the way I am and in any areas of my life that could actually use a major overhaul, I’m too drunk or lazy to fix it. So it’s far easier to have the rest of you just change around my every whim.

Revolution One: we don’t eat enough fast food. I don’t need to lose weight if the rest of you just get really, really, supremely fat. I plan to look good by comparison. This one is actually my gift to you since you are now expected to eat French fries and drink 600-calorie cups of coffee all day long. You’re welcome.

Revolution Two: I’m gonna park wherever the hell I want to. Handicapped-shmandicapped. I realize they will tow my car for not having a proper tag, but I’m pretty sure my car is untowable. That’s what the guy with the tow truck said when I wanted him to come take it to the shop, and I can totally believe him. Besides, I have documented neck arthritis and it’s hard to turn my head. I haven’t tried to get a legitimate handicapped tag because I’m afraid they’ll realize that I probably shouldn’t be driving. Let’s just call it even.

Revolution Three: I am done with shopping in major retail stores. If they don’t sell it in the gas station near my house, I don’t need it. That little gas station sells eggs, milk, bread, and wine, along with a full complement of lunch meats and M&Ms in every flavor. I can buy cleaning supplies and sweatshirts there. What else is there?

Revolution Four: I really should write more, but you people have suffered enough. I’m going to switch to writing those instruction manuals that come with major appliances and do-it-yourself furniture. I can’t suck worse than the people who already write those things. Since no one is actually going to pay me to do this, it’s more of a calling. I’m just going to start taking things apart at random and then writing a manual about how I put it back together.

That’s really the only things that occur to me at the moment, but I’m sure major changes will be in store down the road. For you, obviously. Because as I said, it’s just too late for me. Save yourselves.

Only a Selfish Pig Wouldn’t Be Fit Enough to Eat

ME Overly simple thoughts , , ,

If the stick figure can fall out of a tree without whining about it, why can't my husband?

My darling husband came home from hunting yesterday (without any meat, I feel compelled to add) limping in the door in a pair of pants so shredded that he looked like he’d been attacked by wild dogs. He dropped his stuff and rolled up both pants legs to reveal really horrible bloody gashes running on the outside of both knees. Apparently, he had started to fall out of his tree stand and instinctively stuck his legs out to hold on but they were cut by—get this—the metal screws that hold this tree stand together.

Those of you from rural Alabama not only know exactly what I’m talking about and can visualize the whole thing playing out in slow motion, you even know three relatives that this has happened to. Those of you not schooled in the ways of killing your own wild game from up in the branches of a tree might need a little help, but I’m too lazy to explain it. Just trust me, he started to fall and ended up cutting his legs. The end.

But that’s not actually the end. He cut himself on metal screws. That were rusty. Let that sink in.

There’s an important story that actually happened just last week and it’s important to today’s tale because you need to understand what actually happens in a tree stand. Not only is there an agreement that any member of the hunting world can use your tree stand—and PEE out of it as the need arises—but nature-type things also happen in tree stands. Last week, my husband climbed up in a tree stand belonging to a friend of his and discovered parts of a furry dead animal. I had to explain to him that a large bird of prey had probably used the tree stand as a perch from which to scarf down its most recent kill, probably a squirrel or a rabbit.

So my husband’s tree stand injury now has happened on metal screws that were rusty and coated in rabbit blood, bird poop, and hunter pee. AND HE WON’T GET A TETANUS SHOT. He refused. I nagged, I begged, I threatened, I Googled stories of people dying from lock jaw, I even called up close-up images of festering yellowy-oozy infectious wounds. And he’s such a baby that he won’t go get one.

As hunting people, we are realists. My husband declared that if he gets tetanus, oh well, he dies, no big deal because his life insurance is paid up. To which I pointed out, you have to be a real jerk to go ahead and die from something infectious because then the rest of us can’t eat you in the apocalypse or in a blizzard or something. Way to think of others, asshat.

Keeping You Badger-Free Since 2011

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Those of you who were reading my blog around this time last year probably remember that we finally had our elderly dog put to sleep because she started to smell like the plague. We got a new one, a really great poodle from a poodle rescue center (yes, they specialize now), and the only thing that made him really great was he knew not to get his leash wrapped around mailboxes when we would go for a walk. This Mensan of a dog could look at an object and decide to go around it without me having to drag him by the neck. It doesn’t take much to make me happy. I got a bathrobe and an office chair for Christmas, I’m kind of low maintenance that way.

I didn’t write about it at the time because I was still on the verge of throat punching people, but our great Mensan poodle was stolen back in the fall. I couldn’t very well go tell the poodle rescue people that I managed to lose a dog WHILE I WAS HOME and I needed them to give me another one, so I went to the local regular dog rescue and had to take whatever they had. Unfortunately, they had no poodles, but they did have a Dachshund.

I really should have paid better attention to the fact that they were way too excited about getting this dog a home. They offered to deliver it. Only now in hindsight is that making alarm bells go off. But it didn’t look like any of those wretched things on the Sarah McLaughlin commercials so I thought it would be a good pet for us. Well, that and the fact that this dog was on clearance. I’m a sucker for anything on sale.

This is possibly the stupidest dog alive. Forget learning any commands in human language, I’m not even sure this dog speaks dog. I’ve pulled this tiny animal out of our toilets and trashcans more times than I care to think about, especially when I see it licking my husband’s face. No, wait, that’s actually kind of funny.

The really sad thing about the dog is the fact that it looks like it was made from parts of other dogs. It’s legs are obviously too short because it’s a Dachshund, but it’s back is also too long, it’s head is so big compared to its body that it has trouble keeping its ears off the ground, and it trips on its own horrifically long tail a lot. This thing looks like someone’s idea of a genetic joke. There’s something so galactically wrong with it that I’m not even sure I should be capitalizing the name of its breed.

I knew there had to be a purpose for this breed besides “court jester,” kind of like how retrievers bring things back and collies keep things in a circle, so my brother Googled it for me. Sit down for this one: Dachshunds were bred for their ability to keep badgers away.

If I am ever in danger from a badger attack, say, while waiting in the carpool lane at my kids’ school, all I have to do is whip this stupid thing out of my purse and those badgers will tuck tail and run. I’m envisioning ruffian Vikings going on midnight pillaging runs with Dachshunds strapped firmly to the front of their armor to ward off the unsuspecting town’s badger defenses.

Since obviously the Dachshund can’t actually take on a badger in combat, I think the purpose for the dog was to make the badgers not want to be anywhere in the vicinity. So far the only defense mechanism my dog has in the ongoing struggle against badger attack is this unholy smell that she emits from a special anti-badger gland right on her ass. The vet keeps having to “express” it but I think he’s actually making a commercial-grade badger defense spray out of the foul-smelling ooze that goops out of her. I can already testify that it is effective in keeping one’s family members away, which is reason enough for owning a stupid wiener dog.

The Imperfect Killing Machine

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It’s wonderful. The four of us are home from school and work, enjoying the calm that settles after a major holiday. There we were, snuggled together in the big bed, watching a nature documentary on our new big TV.

Suddenly, the serenity was shattered by a sort of oversized cat launching itself out of a tree and onto the back of a supremely furry wild boar. Its teeth and claws immediately went to work tearing hunks of meat off the screaming animal. And of course, my husband has to shatter the moment by saying, “So that’s what squealing like a pig sounds like.”

But that actually wasn’t the worst commentary on the program. No, it was from the headless voice-over narrator who said, “Although only slightly larger than the average house cat, the Siberian whatever-cat is the perfect killing machine.” Like we couldn’t tell that from the pig fur strewn across the landscape.

You know what you never hear? You never get a TV show where the narrator calls any kind of toothy animal a completely pointless waste-of-a-killing-machine. It’s always, “perfect” killing machine. Where are the TV shows about the predators that starved themselves into extinction back in the Triassic Period because they were completely incompetent killing machines?

I guess evolution really is a bitch that way. The predators that weren’t 98% tooth-and-claw died out years ago, just like the animals that had a really high center of gravity compared to their prey or the ones that were too pea-brained to find the nearest watering hole. Sadly, stupid seems to be an evolutionary trait that nature selects for. If my dog is any proof, there is no such thing as an animal that is too dumb to live.

Post Party Depression

ME Overly simple thoughts , ,

Even Charlie Brown put more effort into decorating his tree than I did.

The subject of after holiday letdown certainly isn’t anything new. I’m usually so riled up by all the month-long preparations for holidaypaloozas for a variety of different religions (I don’t like to limit myself to one particular holiday, just in case) that by the time the last piece of tinsel comes down and the last chorus of “Dreidel Dreidel Dreidel” has been sung, I’m an emotional and physical wreck. I decided to avoid the bleak winter depression and resulting heavy drinking by just avoiding the whole mess in the first place.

I don’t mean that I skipped Christmas entirely at my house, although it would be safe to say that Scrooge had a little more festive going on at his place than I do. Sure, the stockings were hung with care…on the back of the couch. There is a tree up in my living room, and it’s fully decorated…with stuff I happened to have lying around the house. Like bottles of expired prescription medications.

The holidays just pretty much snuck up on me this year, so I just never really got around to doing a lot of decorating. Or cooking. Or shopping. I’m hard at work right now on my New Year’s Eve cards since the Christmas cards I bought never even left their box.

But I have a plan. I did a fantastic job today of putting all the decorations on our lovely tree before I shrink wrap the whole thing to put it in the attic.

It’s time to Saran Wrap my Christmas tree.

You read that right. I’m not done with the overspending or commercialism of what used to be a meaningful religious experience, but I am completely through with doing anything that feels too much like cleaning up. So I’ve got every decoration in my arsenal hanging precariously from a nylon and aluminum tree-shaped object and I’m wrapping the entire monument in layers of Saran Wrap until next year. Be forewarned, I have a similar plan in place for the turkey leftovers…

Christmas With Famous People

ME Overly simple thoughts

This is the time of year when all kinds of great nostalgic information comes out about famous people, both living and dead, and their respective holiday traditions. The First Lady’s favorite hot cocoa recipe gets printed in magazines, biographies about noted figures who passed away this year get published, and so on. Not to be outdone by actual famous people because I really hate not being the center of your attention, here is a photo for all of you to enjoy, a mere peek into my childhood. I hope it explains a lot.

A picture is worth a thousand words. This one is only worth about four.

Yes, I am the morose-looking child with my hands over my ears. This would be an excellent time for analysts to speculate on my mental health a la’ Sylvia Plath (“…there were clear signs at an early age, an attempt to shut out the world around her and block the myriad voices that spoke to her in her head, as evidenced in this early photo…”), but sadly, no. My hands are up because my brothers kept trying to put their fingers in my ears. See the brother kneeling next to me, his arm lovingly behind my back? That’s not a hug, dear readers, he’s going for the sneak attack.

The real victim in the photo is actually the baby. That poor thing never stood a chance. We all towered over her and outweighed her by a good bit by the time she was born. The photo has faded somewhat so it’s possible that you can no longer see the fact that she’s covered in a blue glaze. It’s from the fabric softener we had just poured on her, Snuggle, if I recall. Why, you ask. Because we had put her in the washing machine, obviously. Who knew that she could climb out of it without help?

Merry Christmas.