Wednesday, January 14, 2009

Another Blog so soon?!

Another Blog?!?!

Ladies and gentlemen, your author is feeling particularly inspired today. The chef cap and “kiss the cook” apron are on and I’m cooking up an especially scrumptious batch of bloggings. So get out the stretch pants, folks, and saunter on up to the buffet. If you finish three heaping plates of blog, I’ll make you a T-shirt. Provided you pay for the shirt, permanent marker and postage, of course. As anyone who has played Monopoly with me knows, I’m not exactly Uncle Moneybags…The Community Chest was rigged!

The goals
As we all pretend to do, I’ve made a list of goals I will accomplish for the New Year. Yes, it’s mid January. Yes, said goals are traditionally a January 1 “thing.” BUT, my goal list will convince you all of the OK-ness inherent to my not-exactly-right-after-old-father-time-croaked-at-the-sight-of-a-new-year-baby-in-a-top-hat-and-partial-gratuitous-nudity goals. Besides, by starting a bit ‘late,’ I look that much more committed to people who aren’t in on my little secret. Said people with then feel a renewed gumption to stick to their goals. So really, I do this for you.

GOAL #1: Resist the herd mentality
That’s right all you conformists, by not giving in to the corporate climate of Jan. 1 New Year’s Resolutions, I’m actually resisting the herd mentality while simultaneously attacking life like a hungry wombat in a field of snow tussocks…mmmm indigenous grasses! From now until I lapse back into my old ways, I will not buy what the magazines tell me to buy or watch what’s hip on the TV. No. Nothing but what I find in the bargain bin or unattended in various lobbies or advertized in the Christian Science Monitor for me. And if the TV is on, it’s all Frasier reruns and poorly special-effected science fiction movies from the 70s for me.

Have a taste and tell me it’s not classic
Martin (Frasier’s dad): Remember when we turned off the highway? Well, right down from there is the Bed and Bass Motel! Frasier: Bed and Bass–ah yes, one of the finer fish-themed motels!

Niles: You'll see who feels foolish when I'm sitting on a mechanical bull sipping champagne.

Frasier: Don't stare at me, Eddie (Frasier’s dad’s dog). I'm a humane man, but right now I could kick a kitten through an electric fan.

Yep, who needs Rock of Love with classic material like this?

GOAL #2: Run a Half Marathon with the conditional goal of running a Full Marathon later
Now while my athletic accomplishments border on legendary (I hold the Babe Ruth League Unofficial record for most beans in a season- 27 of 29 at bats AND I am the only student in the history of my high school to hyperventilate every single time we had to run the mile AND I once threw a dart into the back of another dart Robin Hood-style), I have yet to put a notch in my marathon belt (yes, I have a notchless marathon belt. I own many belts with various notch numbers, some less humiliating to admit owning than others… Oh strip solitaire belt, why did I ever bring you to show-and-tell?). And how, I ask you, can I wear a notchless belt? Not possible, not at all. SO training has begun for the Grandma’s Half Marathon. I bought a crate of 5-hour energy shooters, some top-of-the-line (by which I mean clearance rack) New Balance shoes, and got myself on a run-until-the-world-has-a-blue-hue-to-it-and-then-seek-out-the-nearest-oxygen-tank-towing-senior-citizen-and-suck-on-the-aforementioned-tank regimen sure to whip me into a shape other than the soggy pear one that I currently sport. IF I do not die or otherwise incapacitate myself beyond recovery, bring on the other 13 miles of huff-puff-huff!

GOAL #3: Stop comparing myself to soggy produce

Along with the running “thing,” I’m a weight lifter again. There’s even one of those strangely huge plastic tubs of flavored protein in my cupboard. Soon, if I compare myself to anything soggy, it will be a soggy predator which no one would dare laugh at because even soaking wet, a tiger can pounce. In fact, the pounce will be rendered more deadly by the added weight of sogginess. So all you gigglers out there…beware my fearful symmetry!

GOAL #4: Use Sir William Blake references more often in my daily life.
I must create a system or be enslaved by another mans; I will not reason and compare: my business is to create.

Check. And check.

Whhhhy? Because some people are bad.
For Christmas, my roommate, A., bought Minnesota Wild Tickets for myself and my other roommates P., J., and…um…other J. (herein, “Jay”). Yesterday was the big game. I could tell you all about it, but no one reads this blog for sports updates (6-3 Wild. GO CLUTTERBUCK!!!!!). What YOU want to hear about is the 5 year old in the bathroom learning how to use the urinal for the very first time.

So there I was, minding my business, reading the over-the-urinal periodicals (Yes, ladies, we have over-the-urinal periodicals. Jealous?) when a man came in with his son who, for the sake of the blog, was 5 (He very well might have been 6 or 4, depending on genetics and diet). Below is a 100% factual and not-at-all-embellished transcription of their conversation (Scout’s honor):

Man: Ok, you can go there. I’ll use this one. No, go over there, this one is mine.
Boy: WhhHHhhy?
Man: Because men don’t share.
Boy: Oh. (Boy reaches out and grabs lip of urinal next to his as if steadying himself the way old men sometimes use the wall to steady themselves (yes, ladies, old men steady themselves at the facilities)).
Man: What are you doing?! Don’t touch that!
Boy: WhhhHHHhhhy?
Man: Because some people are bad.
Boy: Oh.
Man: Jeez, now you have to wash your hands.

…NOW you have to wash your hands?! Isn’t it standard protocol that before you leave the bathroom you soap and scrub, scrub and soap?! Have the theories of parenting changed that much since I was a wee urinal user?

COMING ATTRACTIONS
Coming Soon. Go find something else to do now! Tom, get off the internet!