Author: ME

I Don’t Go All The Way

ME Overly simple thoughts , , ,

A scene from the best running movie EVER...Run Fat Boy Run

Several years ago I got a little fed up with being pretty fat. It was one of those lightning-through-the-sky epiphany moments where I literally got up out of the recliner and walked a mile. Unfortunately, it was midnight and very cold outside and several neighbors apparently called the authorities, but the upside was it became an exercise habit. The exercise led to losing a few pounds, which led to eating better, which led to losing more weight, which led to actually starting to compete in sports.

Before I knew what had happened, I found myself crossing the finish line of my first marathon. And then my first triathlon. And then winning my first marathon. And then qualifying for Boston. And then finishing an Ironman 70.3 and even competing in the USAT National Championships.

Somewhere along the way, probably tucked in between two back-to-back twenty mile training runs or following a one hundred mile bike ride, I had another lightning-through-the-sky epiphany: this is really stupid.

So this year when I started taking my writing more seriously (which is grown-up talk for I started doing it every day for hours at a time after getting home from my real job) and I no longer had time for my DAILY fifteen miles of running, all of that exercise fell by the wayside. I needed something to motivate myself to lace up the ol’ joggers. I signed up for a half marathon with a few friends.

I remember being vaguely aware throughout the race that I didn’t have that far to run, and at one point I looked up and saw a big sign with the 9-Mile marker on it and I was actually very, very sad. I’d thought I was coming up on Mile 7 and I realized I’d daydreamed through two whole miles and missed them. I was only going to get to run four more miles instead of six and I was a little bit crushed.

And the greatest thing happened: at thirteen miles, I got to quit running! I finished the half marathon at what is usually the HALF WAY point of my races! I didn’t have to do it all over again! What kind of sadistic moron kept THAT a secret all these years??? No one ever told me I could run thirteen miles and then go sit down! I had never been so happy to finish a race.

So I’m pretty sure that for right now my days of long distance running are over. I don’t have the time to train like I should and quite frankly, I just don’t give a shit. When I no longer have to use those wasted hours between midnight and four to accomplish stuff, maybe I’ll take it up again. For now, I’m just not the kind of girl who goes all the way.

“And the Oscar Is Revoked From…”

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Some of the worst cinematic experiences, aside from sitting in front of a row of teenagers who talk about Gossip Girl episodes during the entire movie, are when books are made into epic fail movies. I’m going to burn in hell for this statement, but I dare you to defy me:

I can’t stand the movie To Kill A Mockingbird.

There, I said it. But deep down in the part of your soul that you don’t talk about, you know I’m right. Gregory Peck—you know, the guy who won the freakin’ Oscar for his portrayal of Atticus Finch—acted like someone so old he was practically one tapioca pudding cup away from going in the home. The kids’ Hollwood-ized Southern accents were so thick the viewers needed subtitles. We’re not even going to talk about how overacted the courtroom scene was.

Even worse, crucial scenes in the book were left out. I know, I know. If they had included every great scene in the book, the movie would have lasted longer than it took the Titanic to actually sink (although in THAT movie, it didn’t sink fast enough to save us from more scenes with Jack and Rose).

The real problem for me, though, was that they just didn’t put enough effort into it. It was the sixties. It was all nostalgia-like in black and white to make it super dramatic and to make everybody look really, really poor. It was about racial tension in the South. OF COURSE IT WAS GOING TO WIN THE OSCAR! It was going to win the Oscar BEFORE THEY EVER MADE IT! It could have starred Soupy Sales in the role of Boo Radley and it was going to win! Ergo, it’s like they knew they didn’t even have to try.

So it’s high-time someone made a new version. We had to put up with a new Superman, why can’t we have a new Mockingbird? And I will stab someone in the eye socket if Spielberg or James Cameron or that fat guy who made Bowling for Columbine and protests everything gets to produce it. I think Penny Marshall would do an awesome job. One of those adorable Fanning sisters should be Scout (surely their parents have had another kid by now to capitalize on their brand marketing…see if the new one is busy).

I am Prozac-level gripped-in-fear that somebody would think George Clooney or Matthew McConaughy should play Atticus and then we’d be stuck with two hours of the older gentleman-lawyer walking around shirtless, probably even in the part where he’s reading the paper in front of the jail to protect Tom Robinson from the lynch mob. That would be the scene where Bruce Willis would fly in—probably also shirtless—and blow everyone to pieces with his flame thrower bazooka. Then they’d have the robots from Transformers (led by a now-lucid and verbal Boo Radley) stomp through the streets, scattering the racist farmers like so many cockroaches and destroying the courthouse to prevent the ultimate injustice from ever taking place.

Nevermind. I’ll just watch the original.

Stabby Love is NOT a Good Basis for a Relationship

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Look! This knife matches my outfit and the blood stains won't show on the blade!

I love everybody. Doesn’t matter who they are, what they are, or what kind of pantyhose they like to slip on for an evening of surfing the internet from the darkened privacy of their homes. There are very few people that I even don’t care for, let alone hate. I sleep well at night.

So if I ever have this uncanny urge to stab you until you resemble a sea sponge, you know you’ve done something wrong on the galactic level. The person who took my dog is on the sponge list and so is the teacher who yelled at my daughter. If I ever get to meet any real-life pedophiles in a spot without any surveillance cameras, they are in actual danger of being stabbed with whatever I find handy, and hopefully it’s really dull and rusty and contaminated with small pox.

I don’t think I’m mean enough to actually enjoy stabbing someone and the sound of pulling off a chicken leg really creeps me out so I’d be willing to bet that I couldn’t pull off a full-scale lethal poke of someone. I’m sure I’d be more of a potentially severe scraper, kind of close-shaving my victims. Maybe break the skin a little and hope that a nasty infection set in. It’s fun to think about, though, especially with eerie horror-move sound effects playing in the background. Maybe someone else can make the squish-squish-squish noise and I’ll just do the stabby motions like on Psycho. Either way, don’t piss me off unless you want to endure a really intense razor burn.

Apparently Spammers Like It When You Talk About Them

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I swear that's the guy who emailed me.

So I posted what I thought was an innocent blog post merely informing the world that I received a spam-flavored tweet about a dog photo contest. It’s my civic duty to let you know that there are A) spammers out there and B) there’s a dog photo contest if you want to enter.

No sooner had I published that post than I was inundated ($5 word) with spam in my inbox! It’s like there are gangs of spammers waiting to jump you on the subway. Or the internet. Whatever. So like a good insomniac, I clicked, “Report As Spam,” on all of their emails. So there.

I’ve now met the Godfather of Spam. This morning, I had an email with the subject line, “Find Out Who Has Your Name.” Now, you know you’re going to open that email just in case the people with your name are either Johnny Depp, the Georgia Lottery Commission, or Homeland Security.

NO! It was a spammer claiming to have the names of all the spammers in the world who had access to my email address! And for just $49 he could get my name back from all of them and I would never receive spam ever again. He’s trying to sell me protection! I saw this in a movie once! He’s got spammers to hang out in front of my email account scaring away my contact list and just being overall menacing looking, and now he’s going to charge me money to make them go away!

Unfortunately for him, I also saw this other movie where the store owner made all the thugs stop hanging out in front of his store by blaring opera music as loudly as he can. I don’t happen to care for opera, so I’m going to start reciting James Joyce in all my tweets and emails. In all caps. They’ll get bored a pick a new victim any time now.

Epic Spam Fail

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See this tweet I got from Inge-Somethin-Bitchy-Or-Other? I had just sent out the Tweet that my poodle had been stolen from my yard, miraculously escaped from his captors, but then was run over and killed on a major highway about a mile from our house. So IngeBitch the Spambot decides that this is a great time to REQUEST A PICTURE OF MY DOG SO I CAN WIN $1000. Would you like a before or after picture, dumbass? Because the after picture is KIND OF TWO DIMENSIONAL.

I shall punch you in the throat now.

The F*** It List

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Pole dancing lessons are totally on the list.

There’s really no good reason why I’ve never had a martini. I’ve just never gotten around to it. I’ve actually heard that they’re pretty gross, like drinking watered down battery acid, but apparently there’s a whole segment of the population who chooses vodka over food all the time, so how bad can it be? If I found myself in a bar with nothing else to do and my choices were Dr. Pepper, Korean beer, or a martini, of course I’d swill the vodka in the spaceship cup.

There is a very short list of stuff I’ve never gotten to do that I’m just dying to try, and it’s a pretty eclectic bucket list. Hang gliding looks pretty interesting, I’ve never taken a two-hour zip line tour over the treetops of Costa Rica, and I’ve never been to Mount Rushmore. I think I’d even like to go to a snake handling church just once, just to cheer for the snakes.

However, there is a list of things I’m just not interested in trying, no matter how much someone paid me. It’s my F*** It List, stuff that I just could give a hoot less about. Eating pig testicles is definitely on that list, but it’s not even at the top.

I don’t ever want to feed Alka-Seltzer to seagulls to see if they blow up. If they don’t, you just wasted a lot of expensive Alka-Seltzer. If they do, you just blew up a seagull.

I’ve never eaten a Big Mac. I’m only five-and-a-half feet tall, where would I put it? And who decided to put schloopy Thousand Island dressing on a hamburger? And why is there an extra piece of bread stuffed in there for no reason? I’ve purposely eaten raw horse meat and I still don’t want a Big Mac. Go figure.

I’ve never seen Love Story. Does it have Barbara Streisand in it?

I’ve never been to Wisconsin, but in that particular case I don’t think I’m welcome there. Shut up, I don’t have to tell you why. Well, the feeling’s mutual, Wisconsin, so suck it!

For some reason, I really, really don’t want to try bungee jumping. I’m not even afraid to do it, I just don’t think it would feel great to be slingshotted. (author’s note: I thought I just made up the word slingshotted but my spellchecker’s totally buying it. Someone must have beaten me to it. Thanks a pantsload, Shakespeare.)

While I’m a try-anything-once kind of person, there’s just some things I don’t need to do. I’m sure there are lots more things I have no desire to do, but it just hasn’t come up yet. But I’ve decided to focus on the F***It List, because bucket lists are for people who are dying and I don’t want to do that yet either.

Have You Ever Been Tested for Stupid?

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As a teacher, I’m sometimes faced with students with horrible learning impediments. Some of them have medical problems that keep the children from achieving in school, others have family and home life problems that make them into not-so-stellar pupils. But there’s the whole other category to consider: just plain stupid.

Oh, stop gnashing your teeth. I’m not suggesting that we wash our hands of these youngsters and put them to work in the factories straight away. I’m merely pointing out that once upon a time people recognized that humans are born with varying levels of intelligence, but now we’re not having any of that.

If your child just cannot understand fractions, a long time ago we would send him to the lower math class where he would cut up plastic pizzas into different sized wedges until he understood it better. Odds were awesome that he was never going to grow up to be a pharmacist if he couldn’t figure out how to divide doses, but that was okay. He could do something else.

If your daughter struggled with reading, she used to be in the Blue Birds reading group and she got extra attention from the special reading teacher. Chances were excellent that she wasn’t destined to be an author if reading wasn’t her favorite subject, but there were plenty of career paths still open to her.

Now, there’s something wrong with your child and with you if he’s just stupid. You didn’t use enough flash cards or he’s not on the right medication or you didn’t breastfeed like you were supposed to. It can’t just be luck of the draw that he can’t remember to keep his shoes tied, it must be because of asbestos in the walls of your house.

Years ago, Governor Fob James made a startling announcement on the news, “ALL children in Alabama can be above average.” Wow, the governor sucked at math, too. Apparently, you can be in the stupid-kid math class and still succeed in politics. That’s a career path that thrives on stupid.

There’s Nothing Like Working in a Prison to Make You Appreciate Hand Washing

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We tried sinks like this, it didn't end well.

I’ve always had a secret loathing of those signs in public restrooms that inform employees that they must wash their hands before returning to work. I’m really peeved about the fact that someone somewhere had to pass a law requiring businesses to post a sign telling their employees to wash their hands. Common sense should really come into play any time now.

If you’re someone who needs to be told to wash your hands before leaving a restroom, I have the ideal training program for you. Come to work with me. For just one day, if that’s all the time you have. You will be cured of your disgusting forgetfulness in no time.

Here’s a typical day in the prison:

6am – Wake the inmates for morning exercises. They’re going to perform these exercises in the comfort of those jumpsuits they’ve been wearing 24hours a day for the past three days. Oh yeah, and they’ve been exercising in them for three days now. And eating in them. And sleeping in them. Do your very best to avoid touching any of the jumpsuits, and that includes the ones that have just come out of the giant washing machine. Just in case, and all.

9am – Inmates go to school. They sit in my desks writing with my pens on my paper, sometimes holding my books. They rub their hands on my computer keyboards and hold my Kindles. You see where I’m going with this.

12pm – It’s lunchtime! All the inmates get to come out of their cells—you know, those little rooms with a stainless steel toilet in them—for meal time.

5pm – More exercises! Yippee! Because you didn’t sweat in your one jumpsuit enough this morning, we’re going to let you loose for an hour on the indoor basketball court.

10pm – Lights Out. This is the time of day when the inmates get to rest their heads on their pillow-less rubber mattresses wearing—you guessed it—their jumpsuits. Under a wool blanket that was issued to them a week ago.

In the empty spaces in this highly regimented cruise ship schedule, the staff get to enjoy random tasks like picking lice out of the inmates’ hair or bandaging a bleeding busted knuckle or helping scrub down the residents (and the jumpsuits) from the scabies outbreak.

NOW do I need to remind you to wash your hands? Seriously? Washing my hands is a luxury that I like to indulge in seven or eight times a day, and that’s just during the working hours. No, I don’t have a psychological hand washing problem because days that I don’t go to work I honestly don’t have to wash any more often than the sign hanging in my bathroom at home tells me to.

Home Invasions Are Not Fun

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I am completely prepared in the event of a home invasion. I’m also completely prepared for a Russian invasion, thanks to a propaganda video we all had to watch in fifth grade. But for the home invasion, I have Klingon-like weapons strategically placed all around my house, like Jodie Foster did in Safe Room. The bad guy will just think he’s tiptoeing silently into my kitchen when all of a sudden…whoosh…a knife flies through the air in stealth-mode and goes right through his ear into his skull. At least that’s how it happens when I think about it a lot.

With a shirt that sexy, who would ever think you've got a knife back there?

But I didn’t get to ear-stab anyone today because all of the people in my house were sort of invited. I didn’t invite them, but I invited the person who brought them. I think I actually said something like, “You should all come to my house for this presentation and I’ll make some snacks, too.” Go figure, they took that as an invitation.

It’s like Reverse-King-of-the-Vampires…instead of rendering my safeguards useless because I invited him in, I lost the right to show my stabby love when I told them they could come over. It’s a good thing that they’re really nice and well-mannered and don’t care that I’m writing this about them. I didn’t even have to tell anyone to use a coaster.

Having that many people over at one time (I think there were about 93 people there, but I could be exaggerating just because I was having trouble breathing) was a little unsettling because I’m out of practice on having guests over. I started counting feet at one point, and once it passed twenty I didn’t know what else to do but get out some more chairs and stand back in case one of the feet stepped on me.

All in all, once I got over the feeling that someone was going to punch me in the throat or accidentally spill a Coke on the carpet or something, it was a good experience. Two of my four family members hid in other parts of the house the entire time, and the remaining person just peeked down the stair case from time to time. I could be wrong, but I think I saw the glint of steel in her other hand once in a while. I love my family.

Welcome to October! Feel free to leave.

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In order to explain the crazy that is November, I’d have to back up and explain the insanity that is October. Every year in NOVEMBER (not October), the Office of Letters and Light hosts a month long event called National Novel Writing Month, or NaNoWriMo. I participated last year, it was a total barrel of monkeys.

In order to get ready for the grueling demands of NOVEMBER (not October), some writers decided that OCTOBER (not November) should be dedicated to disciplining ourselves for the job of writing almost 2000 words every day in NOVEMBER (not October) by holding what they call NaBloWriMo in OCTOBER (not November). Get your mind out of the gutter, the Blo part of NaBloWriMo stands for “blog.” Yup, we’re supposed to write a blog post on our sites every day in OCTOBER (not November)(doing that to the months of the year will never stop being funny).

So I’ve some how been dragged along to this clam bake by my fellow writers, and that means a daily blog post in OCTOBER (okay, it’s kind of wearing off now) from yours truly. Sadly, it takes massive amounts of energy drinks mixed with alcohol to write the funny stuff that I manage to post maybe four times a month, so OCTOBER on this blog is going to be fairly dull. Feel free to go over to ShitMyDadSays.com for the duration of the month.

 

However, as I QUICKLY run out of things to talk about, I will have to resort to posting a lot of pictures of random stuff from my new camera phone and every third picture I take is usually an accidental crotch shot. Fully clothed, get over yourself. I will also have to write a LOT about my friends and relatives, so check back often to see if you should take me off your Christmas card list for telling the entire Internet about you getting your first period in the food court of the mall when we were twelve. You were warned.