Category Archives: Humor

July 25, 2012 · 0:00

Primal Scream

Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.  PTSD.

I have it.  Yup, it’s true.  And these days I can hear Lost In Space’s Robot saying “Warning!  Danger!”  And he’s talking to me.

What is it that sends me back, brings on the flashbacks, makes me scream “Nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo”?  The Olympics.

I blame Mitt Romney.  I blame the Olympic Committee.  I blame the Raisin.

Yes.  The Raisin.  That is the name John and I gave Jacob’s teacher for 6th class (which is Swiss/British for 5th grade.  Go figure.)  It was a slight bastardization of her real name.  We gave it to her because we hated her and also because she was the cause of the “Trauma” in my PTSD.  And in our family, it was contagious.  All three of us had it.

It started on Back to School Night in September, 2001, when she told us her plan for the entire school year.  John and I exchanged skeptical glances when she told us that they would focus on the Olympics. She was a big sports fan and what do you know, that very winter, the Winter Olympics would be held!

It wasn’t my cuppa, but I figured that a few exercises around the Olympics might be interesting for the kids.  And after all, world HQ for the Olympics was just down the road in Lausanne, Switzerland.

Lausanne, Switzerland, Lake Geneva (Google Image)

But instead of a few things, though, everything the class did involved the Olympics.  Everything.  For the entire year.

Google Image

Learning about the human body?  Let’s learn that the leg bone is connected to the hip bone by looking at skiers’ physiques.

Learning about numbers?  Calculate and compare the speed of each winning downhill skier and divide it by some ratio or other.

Learning geography?  Make a diorama of the flags of the gold medal countries from the previous Olympics and your hopes for this one.

As the parent of a reluctant student, I had to try to convince my son, who had no real interest in things Olympian, to do one more assignment/task/project on The F’ing Olympics.  He hated it.  I hated it.  John hated it.  None of us thought it was interesting; none of the other kids in the class or their parents did either.  It made homework painful.  Boring.  Something to be avoided at all costs.  It made learning misery.

And after beating that dead horse for the entire school year 2001-2002, just realizing that the Olympics are coming makes me break out in a cold sweat.  I hope for a weeks-long power failure.  I stick my fingers in my ears and hum loudly whenever a commercial comes out about TV coverage.  I cry a lot.

There was more.  Much more, but I have, happily suppressed those memories.  The idea of trying to retrieve them makes me believe that there may be something to Primal Scream Therapy.

So if you’re posting on the Olympics over the next couple of weeks, that scream you’ll be hearing is mine.

Nooooooooooooooooooooo! (Google Image)

71 Comments

Filed under Childhood Traumas, Criminal Activity, Family, Geneva Stories, Humor, Stupidity

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July 24, 2012 · 0:00

You’re Nuts!

We’ve all seen them.  They seem to be on every commercial vehicle these days.

Google Image

But have you ever called one of those numbers?  Have you ever reported somebody?  I didn’t think so.

Recently, my son was stuck in traffic behind Truck No. 47.  So he called the number on the back of the truck.

“Hello, this is Nancy,” said the voice at the other end of the phone. “How can I help you.”  (She didn’t sound very happy to be getting this call, Jacob later said.)

“Hi,” Jacob said.  “I want to report Truck No. 47.”

“Yes sir,” said Nancy.  “What seems to be the problem?”

“Oh, I just wanted to let you know that the driver of Truck No. 47, well,  he’s doing a really great job.”

“Excuse me, sir?”

“Yeah.  The driver of Truck No. 47 is a terrific driver.”

“Would you please hold for a moment sir?  I need to find a form to record this on.”

Meanwhile, traffic started moving again.

“You need to hold on, please.  Traffic is moving, and I have to pull over,” Jacob allegedly said to Nancy.  (I know, I don’t believe him, either.)

“Now, how long were you observing Truck No. 47, sir?”

“Oh, I’ve been following him for a while, all through Northern Virginia.  He’s amazing.  He stays on his side of the road, obeys the speed limits, always uses his turn signal.  Really, this guy is a model driver.”

“Ummm, thank you for calling to let us know, sir.”

“You’re welcome.  It’s just nice to see such a great driver on the road these days.”  Jacob hung up, smiling.

I am pretty sure that this qualifies as a random act of kindness.  It was definitely random.

Cool Kid, 1994

Today is Jacob’s 21st Birthday.  Happy Birthday, Jacob!

By telling this story, I just wanted to let you know, today, how very proud I am of this crazy man cub John and I raised.  Because you see, Jacob is one of the funniest, nuttiest people I have ever known.

It’s true.  Hey, Jacob?  You’re nuts! 😉   I couldn’t have found a sillier birthday song for you:

69 Comments

Filed under Awards, Driving, Family, Humor, Traffic

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July 19, 2012 · 0:00

You Heard it Here First

Someday, you guys will be considered pioneers.  The first know-it-alls.  The first to proclaim to the world that I am a sentient being.  (Or is it that I am a “senting” being in the sense that I can smell a rat?  Or maybe that I am a dog.  Whatever.)  You all will be among the first to realize that I am a genius.

Everyone else had forgotten her.  Put her out of their minds as she stayed strangely silent.  Unusually speechless.  Not at all noteworthy.  Or, perhaps she was just that tree that falls in the woods that nobody heard.

Huh?

She’s back ….

Google Image

Yup, Michele Bachmann is in the news again — saying inappropriate things about other people.

In the last couple of days, she’s said stuff that’s even gotten Speaker John Boehner, among others, trying to distance himself from her craziness.

Here’s a smidge of a write up from the SCTimes (that’s the St. Cloud Minnesota paper for those of you who aren’t up on all your acronyms):

Rep. Michele Bachmann had made fresh allegations of ties between an Islamist movement and Rep. Keith Ellison, even as Bachmann’s fellow Republicans increasingly condemn her calls to investigate the movement’s influence within the U.S. government.

In an interview with radio host Glenn Beck today, Bachmann said Ellison, the first Muslim elected to Congress, “has a long record of being associated with … the Muslim Brotherhood.”

This was, of course, after Michele also claimed that Secretary of State Hilary Clinton’s deputy chief of staff, Huma Abedin, was an infiltrator of the Muslim Brotherhood.

Does she have proof?  Of course not.  She doesn’t need proof.  She has faith!

But those meanies who are criticizing Michele, well, they don’t understand her like I do.   Those folks, like so many others, were not followers of FiftyFourAndAHalf back when I explained Michele’s problem to the world.  So they just don’t know Michele’s secret.  They don’t understand her the way I understand her.  And the way you understand her if you were one of the three people who had actually read my blog one year ago, when I explained just what happens to Michele Bachmann sometimes.

Sigh.

So here it is again.  There are of course some differences between now and then.  But please — don’t make me repeat this next summer.

From July 21, 2011 — I give you the explanation you’ve been waiting for.

TWINSIES

Me and Michele Bachmann are twinsies!  And gosh I’m excited to tell you about it.  Especially since I just learned it was true!  We share something truly special.  It’s the big story in today’s news!

Well, there are the regular, ordinary things we have in common.  We’re both women, we’re both interested in politics, and we both love to pledge allegiance to the flag!  What could be more fun at a slumber party?  What’s more, we both believe in and even PRACTICE marriage.  I would bet the interest on the national debt, though, that my husband isn’t gay.  Now that we’ve all met Michele’s, I don’t think many folks would bet that hers isn’t.  So she has lots of time for sleep-overs.

Anyway, the thing we both have most in common are migraines!  Did you read about hers?  Well I get them too!  And I can tell that they affect us both the same way.  So we all need to feel really bad that we’ve been so hard on her.  I know I do.  Because this diagnosis answers a lot of questions for me.

You see, when I get a migraine, I don’t hide in the dark under a pillow.  I don’t cringe in agony.  I don’t stay home from work, shirking all my responsibilities, waiting for time and pain to pass.

Nope.  I get stupid.

I wish I got “dumb” as in “mute.”  Then I wouldn’t look so, well, dumb.  But I don’t.   I talk even though I develop a really-not-funny-and-don’t-you-dare-laugh-at-me linguistic problem.  It’s called transient aphasia, and sometimes it comes instead of the headache.  The wrong word comes out of my mouth.  And the word that comes out isn’t even close to the one I meant to say.

For example, sometimes I tell my friends that I have a “microwave” when I’m trying to say I have a “migraine.”  They get confused.

Clearly, my new twinsie, Michele, has aphasia, too.  And since we share migraine symptoms — we’ll be BFFs!

Think about it – it must be true.  There are so many examples!  Like when she said that the first shot in the Revolutionary War was fired in “New Hampshire”?  She clearly knew that it was fired in Taxachussetts – she just had a migraine!  And you thought she was dumb.

Or when she was naming Founding Fathers, she knew that she wanted to just say “John Adams” but “Quincy” just jumped right there in the middle.  So everybody thought that she thought that John Quincy Adams was a Founding Father.  Of course she knew he was still a mere lad at the time of the Revolution, she just couldn’t say it right.  And you thought she didn’t know the names of the Founding Fathers.

And when she said that those same Founding Fathers fought tirelessly against slavery.

Clearly, she gets migraines like mine a lot.

Poor Michele.  Not everybody understands her.  Not everybody believes her.  Not everybody stops up their mouths to keep from laughing aloud when she speaks.

But I do.  Well, I do now.

So here is my pledge.  If my new BFF, Michele Bachmann, becomes President, I promise to have lots of sleep-overs at her house.  That way I’ll be sure to be with her when she acts all Commander-In-Chief-y, and needs to order the troops during a nuclear confrontation.  And when she needs to say

“STAND DOWN!”

I’ll make sure she doesn’t accidentally say

“FIRE!”

59 Comments

Filed under Elections, Humor, Hypocrisy, Law, Politics, Stupidity

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July 17, 2012 · 0:00

Garbage In – Garbage Out

My bloggin’ buddie Ben Mitchell has done a series of posts that are really helpful for those awful doubts all of us who like to write have in spades.  Ben’s latest post, My Writing is of the Highest Quality made me think of this story.

*     *     *

We’ve all had them.  The Boss from Hell.  Anna was mine.

Thirty years ago I worked for a woman who was known to swallow subordinates.  People who worked for her often left the state just to get away from her.  That’s how I got away, and I started a trend, actually.

Anna was smart, dedicated, a work-a-holic.  She expected perfection.  Documents were edited by four or five people, proofread by everyone from the most senior lawyer on down to the lowliest paralegal (me).  Nothing could go out to our clients with a substantive mistake, a grammatical error, an incorrect comma or extra space between words.  Worse, Anna didn’t mince words.  She didn’t spare feelings.  Working for Anna was a daily “sink or swim” situation.  And she always seemed to want to fill your pockets with rocks.

Still, for me, the job was a gift.  I had been working as a legal secretary, a job I hated.  But, the head partner of the department thought I was funny (which as we all know correlates with being incredibly intelligent).  So he offered me a promotion, asked if I would be interested in taking a job as a paralegal, a “professional.”  I would be part of the team of professionals in the legislative and regulatory division of a law firm.  I would learn all about Washington from the inside.

I would get paid less, work longer hours, and get no overtime.  What a deal!

I snapped it up though.  Because a big part of it was learning and the rest was writing.  Writing boring, humorless stuff, yes.  But writing is writing.  And getting paid to write?  Well, it doesn’t get much better than that, does it?

But Anna was unenthusiastic.  She didn’t want me.  She didn’t want to have someone else, even her boss, choose her assistant.  But we were stuck with each other.

It took five years for her to laugh at one of my jokes.  But I digress.

So I became a legislative assistant on environmental issues.  My job was to analyze legislation, attend hearings, know what all the different Senators and Congressmen thought about legislation, predict what would happen to a bill.  And I wrote memos to our clients to enlighten them.

But first they had to get past Anna.  The clients, they were easy.  The boss?  She was damn hard.

She didn’t mince words.  She tore apart sentences, decimated analyses.  She always knew more about the issue and the Congress and what position each member was taking than I did.  It was, well, challenging.  And annoying.  It was often hard not to collapse in angry tears.

But for the most part, I understood that I was getting the best training I could get.  How many of you have had each and every word you wrote for 10 years brutally dissected?  I did.  And it was never pretty.  But I learned.

Still, even a person like me who desperately needed that job has her limits.  And I reached them when, during one period, Anna would inexplicably throw my draft memos back at me saying “WHAT IS GARBAGE???!!!”  This question was not good for my ego.

I couldn’t quit, I needed the job.  I couldn’t go over her head, because, well, I like to fight my own battles.  But clearly, I needed to do something.

So I rooted around in the files until I found a memo Anna herself had written about one of my issues.  It was years old, but the factual information was still spot on.  I needed to change a couple of little things, the Senate Bill number, the names of a few of the Senators, and voila!  Anna had written my memo for me.

When I gave it to her, Anna shouted “What is this GARBAGE?”

“Actually, Anna,” I responded, “You were so unhappy with my last memo that I got this old one out of the file.  You wrote it; I just changed the bill number.”

Anna was silent for a minute and then said,

“Well, you write better than I do; I expected more of you.”

From that day on, she was respectful and pleasant.  She learned that it was OK to laugh at my jokes and that I would still work hard, regardless.

*    *    *

The Boss from Hell.  Anna was mine.  Or was she the one that taught me the most? She certainly taught me more about writing than anyone else I’ve ever known.  She taught me to be careful, to pay attention, to look at every word.  So was she really the Boss from Hell, or the Editor from Heaven? I can never decide.  Probably both.

But she is still my friend.

52 Comments

Filed under History, Humor, Writing

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July 13, 2012 · 0:00

Of Bards and Bains

You probably won’t be surprised to know that I am enjoying the news these past few days.  Some of it anyway.  I am fascinated by Mitt Romney’s tenure at Bain Capital.  I may even start to watch business news, CNBC.  And pick up a copy of the Wall Street Journal.

Nah.

But tonight I tuned in to find out the scoop.  The latest.  The Dirt.   And I heard a lot.

Mostly, the sound I heard was me screaming, though.  Because in one of those efforts to present “both sides of the story,”  MSNBC interviewed David Corn, the reporter who broke Mitt’s “When did he leave Bain Capital, and when did he know it” story.  But, to keep the semblance of balance between the two sides, they also interviewed a total DWEEBE Republican by the name of Rick Tyler.

Rick worked for Newt Gingrich and was involved in Newt’s opposition research which took on Mitt’s record as head of Bain Capital.  Now?  Well, Rick has his talking points, and he’s going through them.  On national TV.  Whether he really understands them or not.  And whether or not he can even read them correctly.  Sadly, I got the distinct impression that there is quite a bit that Rick doesn’t understand.  [We can start with the fact that during the GOP primaries he worked for a guy that everybody hated and hadn’t a snowball’s chance to win the nomination.]

OK, my problem?  Rick kept insisting that all this talk about Bain Capital is:

“A lot to do about nothing.” 

He said it with an air of intellectual superiority, as if he knew something that we did not. 

Ummmm.  He did not.  He did not even know what we all know to be the correct name of that there Shakespeare play.

Remember, this guy is a Republican spokesman.  Shouldn’t speaking be kinda his thing?  By definition, shouldn’t he be able to quote from the Bible, from Machiavelli, from Shakespeare?  Isn’t that what spokespeople do?

Now, I like to give folks the benefit of the doubt.  Perhaps Rick misspoke.  Nope.  Because he said it repeatedly.

Here’s the link to the segment:  #48179609  [Sorry, no YouTube.  This is the link to the piece — the offending language appears about 5 mins into the story.]

After the third time he announced that, for the world to pay attention to the whole Bain Capital “when did I leave and when did I know I was gone” thing was, “a lot to do about nothing,” well, the only thing I could hear was the sound of myself screaming at the TV.  Sorry.  Stupidity makes me shout.

At this moment in time, I don’t know what this Bain Capital story will amount to.   Personally, I think it is very serious, because no matter which way you look at it, you really can’t say that it is “Much Ado About Nothing.” One way or another, Mitt Romney lied.  Either he left in 1999 and lied to the State of Massachusetts about his residency when he was running for governor, or he left in 2002 and lied about the fact that he wasn’t in charge when all those nasty layoffs happened.

According to my mother, lies come back and bite you in the butt.

Maybe this time, even if you’re a Republican, those teeth are going to hurt.

52 Comments

Filed under Criminal Activity, Elections, Humor, Hypocrisy, Law, Politics, Stupidity, Voting

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