Lil miss informed

When I started up this blog, I had to determine the kind of tenor I wanted to create. Was it going to be strictly surface biographical in which, trust me, I have plenty of stories to tell or did I want to go all real world on you to include current events and politics?

Initially, I thought I would keep it neutral to pacify the masses but most of you know me anyway and know that I have plenty o' anarchy up my crawl. Plus, there are no masses reading this, so I will really be offending no one. I don't even have liberal friends.

Just kiddingggg.

Be that as it may, I do enjoy a good debate whilst trying to keep heated political dialog to a minimum, understanding that these ideological differences tend to divide and rarely conquer minds or hearts. Finding that zen place between being a silent objector and fact slapping someone in the face is difficult to balance but it's something I hope to fine tune over time. Balance that is, not the fact slapping in the face part. Well, maybe just a little of the slapping.

When I air my grievances, groan and capitulate, question and jest to your disenchantment, know that there within lies my bona fide self, and in that sacred place, we can hold hands and just agree to disagree, okay? Great.

With that said, here is a letter I constructed after receiving an unsolicited email from a well intentioned, probably sweet girl named 'lil miss hottie'.  She babysits on the weekends for cash and wears sweatpants with the word "Juicy" on her backside.  I'll bet you my first born.

--------------------------------Original Message---------------------------

From: lil miss hottie

Date: Dec 2, 2008 11:59 AM

are you tired of global warming? acid rian? polution? people dying everyday?

well with your help we can stop it!

earth day is April 22nd and if you will wear green and a green wriste band and spread this meassage to all of your friends that would be so great!

thx for you suport!

Yours Truly responds:

Dear lil miss hottie,

I congratulate you on your eco-efforts, however, let’s walk through a few things before I have to add another wrist band to my rainbow of causes.  The pulse on my right arm is now in the single digits.  I care too much.

Hottie, judging from your half-naked default picture, your best bet is an audience of older men who have a heart for poorly conceived environmental causes and young nubile bodies.  I have no such affinities. However, I am curious as to why you think these are the issues that I need to tell all my friends, okay, friend about.

Tell me, how many times did you step out of your home this winter and say "Why the fish sticks is it 4 degrees again today?"  100 times?  50 times?  More than you ever have in your 14 years of living?  This winter's temperatures were some of the coldest the earth has had in decades.  Those inconvenient truths.  Do you remember your teachers in school telling you about the polar bears drowning in the arctic because of the rapidly melting ice caps?   Well, it's rumored that a family of traveling arctic polar bears came into your backyard and snacked on your family cat.  Why?  Because conditions all over the globe are getting colder, not warmer.  To them, Cleveland seemed downright tropical and Murphy was very old and slow moving.

Acid rain.  Ahhh yes.  I love the alarmist language here.  I don’t doubt the reality of this, however, how do we realistically fix this in a way that would satisfy the most ardent of our environmentalist friends?  Let us remember that acidity in the atmosphere is also caused by occurrences out of our control such as volcanic emissions, wild fires and cows with IBS.  We can see that acid rain has been happening for thousands of years because of acidic detections in glacial ice.  Thankfully, hundreds of generations before us have built up immunity to the adverse affects of the dreaded summer-time sprinkle.

Finally, what to do about the problem of  "people dying everyday."  This is a tough one.  I digress.  I suppose it is possible to stave off or postpone death with clanging symbols and fog horns but this can only be temporary.  It can also be a hindrance for those who are ready to get a move on already.

Certainly your intentions were good, lil miss hottie, but for now there are things that have more merit in your world, like dreamy Brian Peters in 2nd period History class and edible lip-gloss.

Best Regards,
BB

Doggy dreams

Freedom's dreams of playing Michigan football were marred by his clubbed paws.

Likewise, his desire for girl-dogs were called into question due to his "limp writh-sts".

Songwriter vs. Beast

Meet Rod Stewart. He did this to himself.

Meet Freedom. He cannot help it.

Judas

Dear Maria,

You made it so perfect. Twelve followers. My twelve little blogger disciples, dwindled down now to eleven. You were neither family or friend, in other words, you were not obliged to read my ramblings.  I don't even know where you came from.  Houston, England, Delaware?  Why did you go away?  Was it my poor grammar?  Bad sentence structure?  Terrible jokes?  Lame delivery of the terrible jokes?

My morning had been full of sunshine and thoughts of babies on rainbows.  Now, my thoughts are of rain clouds and pre-teens on stimulants.

You made me believe in myself, in my skills as a writer and a dreamer, philosopher, architect, historian, biographer, daredevil-beauty queen.  See, you even made me delusional!  That's the kind of power you yield over me.

Maria.  I think I will name my first born Maria.  Maria Kate or Edward-Maria for a boy.

I would like to memorialize you, Maria, with a song that I* wrote:

How do you solve a problem like Maria?
How do you catch a cloud and pin it down?
How do you find a word that means Maria?
A flibbertijibbet! A will-o'-the wisp! A clown! A traitor!

Many a thing you know you'd like to tell her?

Many a thing she ought to understand
But how do you make her stay?
And listen to all you say?
How do you keep a wave upon the sand?

Oh, how do you solve a problem like Maria?
How do you hold a moonbeam in your hand?

Here is a picture to remember your face by, although it has already been etched on my heart...

According to this photo, you are a very pretty girl. You're welcome.

My blog is always open to you even though you are dead to me.

Regards,

BB

*No, I did not.

Giveaway!

You heard me right! Today is your lucky day, folks! I have decided to take this side-show to the big-leagues of blogdom. This morning, I read that one fellow blogger was giving away some fancy pots 'n pans, another one was giving away 6 bags of the tastiest muffins you ever did savor and a third was giving away a nifty neck-warmer/scarf that she herself knitted. Oooooo, talents and useful hobbies. Humpf.

Got me thinking. Wheels a-turnin', smoke billowing out of my ears kind of thinking. Never to be outdone, I am offering some giveaway prizes to the first three lucky people to leave me a comment. Any comment will do. Even a rumor of a comment.

_______________________________________________

First, this lovely Stavzor plastic carrying case. Essential for all those things that need carrying around, like small babies or grain rice. Also included is a pill divider, perfect for those individuals who have chronic health issues, which, if you follow and enjoy reading my blog, you probably* have a few.

For the second lucky comment-leaver, a tried and tested calculator. 1+1= does equal 2 on this math hog.

And in last place, the least glamorous gift. It fell out of the bottom of my office chair today.

*Yes.  You do.  Probably mental in nature.

My Funny Valentine's

Hello, friends. I hope y'all had a nice weekend with your snuggle bunny, sugar plum, shnookums, buffy, picklebutt, dumpster mouth (reserved for those early AM moments), gorillabuns or in my case, Scooby.

How was my weekend you ask? It went fantastically well, thank you for inquiring. So nice that I wish I had documented more in the way of pictures but as it stands, the ones I did take this weekend have me bearing a striking resemblance to Alice from the Brady Bunch. It's true. Look closely.

It's a cruel, cruel world.

Friday night we went to dinner at the restaurant where we had our first date. It was very romantical. We talked about everything under the sun; gay marriage, private school vouchers, the civil war, worms.

Saturday afternoon was spent at the local coffee shop playing a heated game of Trivial Pursuit. We only had a total of five "pie" pieces between the two of us dingleberries over 2.5 hours of playing. Quit thinking to yourself that his pie contained four of the five pieces. That ain't nice.

That night, we had tickets to attend "Jazz Night", a benefit thrown for our local live theater. I suspect we were the only ones there under age 50 and we didn't dance, but we had a great time watching those who did. One man in particular stole our attention. We pegged him to be around 57 with maybe a kid or two in college, and boy was he feeling the groove; passionate finger snapping, swaying to the beat, eyes tightly closed and front teeth plastered firmly to his bottom lip. We just sat back in our chairs and took it all in. It was like people watching at the air port but much heavier on the sequins and Lycra.

Here was Scoob at 8...

At 9:30...

And here he is right before I called us a cab.

Happy Valentine's Day to all my Valentines!

18

1. My brother and I held a funeral service for a yard squirrel that was fried on our electrical wires, entrails and all. For the eulogy, Clint played the theme song from Forrest Gump on his mini battery-operated keyboard. We were 14 and 10, respectively.

2. I could eat bushels of Basil and tomato sauce by the buckets.

3. Veins are disgusting. If you have them, please do keep them to yourself.

4. I cannot help but personify my automobiles. When I am working them hard on the interstate, I feel like maybe I should stop and offer them a Gatorade and a pep-talk.

5. I love to bake and cook however, if it doesn’t turn out as aesthetically pleasing as the picture suggests it should, I get mad and feed it to my dad.

6. I hope to one day see all people the way Jesus sees them. No small feat.

7. Growing out of the middle of my forehead is an unwelcome maverick hair. It grows really fast and requires constant upkeep. Sometimes, on special occasions, I curl it.

8. Hank Paulson, former secretary treasury, has a wicked smooth voice. Google him and swoon.

9. My high school friend and I used to eat whole containers of fat-free Pringles made with the fat substitute Olestra. Only after our hair started to fall out and our bellies made strange guttural noises did we heed the surgeon generals warning.

10. Regarding number 9, I am in desperate need of a new colon (No thanks, Nate Freeman).

11. Baby wrists (fat bands) are just the best.

12. I often wonder how does Mary Matalin stand it?

13. Abraham Lincoln would be one cool dinner date.

14. I will probably never answer my cell phone in your presence. You and what you have to say are important to me.

15. My short term memory is the pits.

16. I got a quart of paint lodged in the spokes of my Schwinn bike riding home from a Kmart parking lot, circa 1990. I was tossed off my bike like a chump and landed in a puddle of semi-gloss and low self-worth. With blood and paint spewing alike, I carried my bike boldly over my head all the way home. Mom hosed me down outside like the family dog and sent me back for more paint, this time on foot.

17. The whole "on foot" has never really worked for me either. Running on a sidewalk during college, I tripped over a hotly contested (but in my mind) huge boulder that was in my pathway. The fall in and of itself was not spectacular, however, I used the side of my head to break my descent. Imagine for a moment that you're me and you are waiting on a table of doctors that same night when one of them looks at you and says, "Amanda, your pupils are as big as dinner plates! Did you have a fall recently?" Well Doctor, yes I have! Was it the scab that just opened up and is now draining down my face that gave it away or was it my eyes that speak of my impending death? One trip to the ER and a single CT Scan later, I'm happy to report that I am still doing retarded things everyday.

Here is my bloody show and saucer plate pupils, compliments of Microsoft Paint.

18. I have reached a very startling conclusion based on numbers 15-18.