Tag Archives: Humor

January 2, 2012 · 0:00

The Envelope Please, Part II

There’s a reason I got crap presents for Christmas this year.  I’ve been a bad girl.  All throughout the month of December, I failed to pass on awards that I received.

Santa, I can explain!  For the rest of you, just sit back and set a spell.  It’s gonna be a long night.

Now Santa, what with all the stuff I had to do for Christmas, and actually trying to keep my job and neurotically trying to get to 5,000 hits on my blog by New Year’s (I made it!), well, I just didn’t have time to really think about these awards.

Now, some folks don’t like these awards, and that’s OK.  I’m giving it to you anyway.  Get over it.

Me, I think it is nice to be appreciated, and it gives me an excuse to really look at the blogs I read, to see who is doing what.  I also tried, I really tried to NOT give an award to someone who already has it.  But since, like me, hardly anybody knows how to get those little pictures over at the side of their blogs, it’s hard to tell.  That’s why I did a special page for my awards – not because I am such a snob (well, yes I am, but that’s not the reason I did it).  It was because I got nominated for one award six times and felt that was the only way I could let you know.

So here are the awards I got, and the people I’m giving them to.  Happy New Year!

Two special mentions here.

First, my friend Delajus at Higher and Higher is a woman I met in an online writing course.  We became fast friends.  She tells me the truth about my writing.  She argues with me.  She never hits “like” because she can’t find the “this is crap” button.  She is a beginning blogger, and only writes when she has something important to share.  She writes beautifully and is one incredibly thoughtful and thought-provoking woman.

Nancy at notquiteold led me directly or indirectly to the whole gang of folks I now consider my blogging buddies.  She wrote a comment on Crabby Old Fart that was funny, perceptive and right on target.  So I clicked on her blog and found a wonderful site.  Whenever I see that she has a new post, I wait until I have time to read it and synthesize it.  Her posts are often about ordinary things in which she finds humor, whimsy and love.  I started clicking on her commenters, and that’s how I found most of the rest of you.

As I said, I tried to look and see what blog awards folks have received, and give them ones they haven’t gotten yet.  If I left you out, I didn’t mean it.  Please let me know and I will rectify.  Because my birthday is coming up and I don’t want no more crappy gifts!

Candle Lighter Award (Thanks to Ardinam at Being Arindam)

My friend Arindam awarded me the Candle Lighter Award a couple of weeks ago.  There are no rules here, I get to award it to as many people as I choose.

Higher and Higher

An Observant Mind

Articles of Absurdity

Aurora Morealis

Georgette Sullins’s Blog

life is a bowl of kibble

notquiteold

Prairie Wisdom

RVingGirl

Sandy like a Beach

Sleep deprived and insane

Sunny Side Up

Undercover Surfer

Winsomebella

 Awesome Blog Content Award (Thanks to Susan at Susan Writes Precise)

This one is simple – to ‘accept’ the award you just add the abc award logo to your blog – the links are at the bottom of this page for you… and then you can share something about yourself with your readers and then pass the award on to other worthy bloggers – there’s no limit to how few – or how many – other bloggers you can send this to.

To share something about yourself – you will need to go through the alphabet and choose a word or phrase for each letter and use that to describe yourself – it might be something about you, something you like, or a place or thing you dream about. And that’s all – no long descriptions or detail – just create a new post, add your shiny new blog award badge and alphabet words and let your readers enjoy finding out a little more about you.  Like Susan, I will do that separately.

So here are my choices:

Higher and Higher

An Observant Mind

Georgette Sullins’s Blog

Childhood Relived

MJ Monaghan

Renovating Rita

Susan Writes Precise – because she’s good AND because of the post she did on the Penis Museum

Undercover Surfer

Winsomebella

Year-Struck

 Kreative Blogger Award (Thanks to Janice at Aurora Morealis)

 

Kreative Blogger Award started in 2008 when an Norwegian Lady named Hulda uses fabrics to create the first Kreative Blogger logo, and gave it to her sister and 3 other friends who she thought are creative. Her sister and friends passed the logo on to other bloggers whom they liked, and thus the trend began.

Today the Kreative Blogger Award logo has evolved, and along with the award that comes with some rules:

  • The Kreativ Blogger image must be displayed on the blog.
  • The nominator must be acknowledged.
  • The recipient must state ten things about himself that his readers probably don’t know.
  • The recipient must pass the award along by nominating at least six blogs to receive the award.

And the envelope, please:

An Observant Mind

AFrankAngle

Childhood Relived

Good Humored

MJ Monaghan

Sandy like a Beach

Year-Struck

 One Lovely Blog Award (Thanks to Janice at Aurora Morealis)

One Lovely Blog Award Rules:

  1. Accept the award, post it on your blog together with the name of the person who has granted the award and his or her blog link.
  2. Pass the award to 15 other blogs that you’ve newly discovered.
  3. Remember to contact the bloggers to let them know they have been chosen for this award.

The envelope, please:

An Observant MInd

Being Arindam

life is a bowl of kibble

Prairie Wisdom

Renovating Rita

RVingGirl

Sleep deprived and insane

Sunny Side Up

Winsomebella

The Versatile Blogger Award (Thanks to Janice at Aurora Morealis and Prairie Wisdom)

The Rules for The Versatile Blogger Award:

  1. Thank and link back to the person that gave you the award.
  2. Share seven things about yourself.
  3. Pass the award to fifteen bloggers that you think deserve it. (Elyse here – there is lots of room.  But many of my blogging buddies have already received this one)
  4. Lastly, contact all of the bloggers that you’ve picked for the award.

The envelope, please:

Being Arindam

Magsx2′s Blog

MJ Monaghan

She’s a Maineiac

psychodynamom

The Red Educational Shoe Award (Thanks to Lorre at Articles of Absurdity)

For this one, I first need crutches if I am expected to walk in that shoe.  I also need to pass it on to 5 supportive commenters.  OK, so I can’t count.

The envelope, please:

Childhood Relived

Emjayandthem

Higher and Higher

notquiteold

Sleep deprived and insane

psychodynamom

She’s a Maineiac

Year-Struck

So, Santa, you see, I’ve been busy.  But I am having a great time reading and commenting and sharing laughs with all of you guys.  Thanks for reading my stuff, too!

OK, everybody.  Wake up and look for your website.

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January 1, 2012 · 0:00

The Envelope, Please, Part I

Remember how I told you that my acting career died in a broom closet?  I lied.  I mean, I took literary license.  That’s allowed, you know.  I pretend to be a writer both at work and here in the ‘sphere; I am allowed to lie.  So there.

But even after leaving my dream in tatters with the mops and brooms, I continued to pipe-dream.  That’s different than the real thing, and you don’t have to remember lines, or stage directions or what to do with props.  It’s actually much easier.  You get to keep your privacy, too, which is nice.

Most of my friends are aware of this fantasy of mine, and of my need to, from time to time, stand on a table (instead of a stage) and tell a story.  It often involves alcoholic beverages.  The table standing, not necessarily the story.

So, as I try to figure out recipients for the awards I’ve received for blogging in the last couple of weeks, I know when I have an opening.  So tonight, I’m going to tell you about the night I received my Oscars.

Really.  It was an incredibly special night for me.  An honor really.  Well, actually, two honors.  Two Oscars.  Two Awards.  But I only got to make one speech.

It was 1983, and some really fun people worked in my office that summer, one of whom, Jon, was from the area.  Carol, Mike, Jon and I all went to Jon’s house one night.  You see, 1983 was still in the Bronze Age, and Jon’s parents were on the cutting age of technology, because they had a VCR.  And Risky Business had just come out on video.

In the middle of the movie, we took a beer/bathroom break.  And guess what I spotted, casually stuck on the bookshelf in the TV room of Rob’s house.

Oscar 

And Oscar

It turned out that Jon’s father was a filmmaker.  Documentary films.  And while Rob didn’t know of my dreams, Carol sure did.  So my pals presented me with two Oscars for Documentary Filmmaking.  Sadly, not one of us had a camera.  Probably just as well, because not many stars accept wearing blue jeans.

Receiving Oscar, and his twin, Oscar, was a special honor to me, since I had neither made, nor been in any documentary films, nor even fetched donuts and coffee for the real filmmakers.  Regardless,  I got to hold Oscar and Oscar, and I got to make a speech accepting my Academy Awards.  So I am in an unusual club of people who have never actually acted or contributed in any way, shape or form to a movie, who has been presented an Academy Award.

Yes, I’m that good.

But I am of a generous nature.  And while I cannot give each and every one of my blogging buddies an Oscar, I am able to share some awards I have recently received.

But first, I have to figure out who has won what, so as not to be redundant.  Redundancy is OK when you’re getting Oscars, but not so much with blog awards.  But that’ll come.  Soon.  Because we bloggers are taking over the world!  Oscar and Oscar would be proud.

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December 30, 2011 · 0:00

Return

I am afraid of this weekend.  No, not of New Years Eve or the end of 2011 or the beginning of 2012.  I take New Years in a Doris Day sort of way – Que sera, sera.  That’s French for WHATEVER.

But no, I’m afraid because I have to go back there again.  To the mall.  With a return.

There are two shopping malls not far from here Tysons Corner I and Tysons II.  Tysons I is a normal mall.  Homogenized.  Pasteurized.  It has the same stores as every mall in the U.S.  Macy’s.  Brookstone.  Ann Taylor.  Nothing different there.

Tysons II, however, is different.  Very different.  Tysons II, The Galleria, is filled with outrageously priced stores and a Macy’s.  Nordstroms, Cartier, Montblanc.  The Ritz has a direct entrance.

The only attractive feature to someone like me is that there is always plenty of parking and no traffic.  It’s seductive.  So Every year at Christmas time, I forget that I don’t belong and go for one last gift.  I vow never again to go.  But by the next Christmas I forget.

This year was no different.  Two days before Christmas, I needed one last gift, a scarf for my mother-in-law.

“I know,” I thought, stupidly.  “I’ll go to the Macy’s at Tysons II.” I am an idiot.  But, remember, lots of parking, no traffic.  Christmas Magic, right?

There were no employees in Macy’s.  I tried to buy a couple of things, and nobody would take my money.  So I went out into the mall.  I stopped in one store and found a nice scarf for Helen.  Looked at the tag — $198.  For a scarf for an 85-year-old lady who sometimes dribbles.  Nope.  Don’t think so.

So I continued down the main hall in the mall, occasionally stopping to look at something equally overpriced.

Then it started snowing.  In the mall.  INSIDE the mall.  On me.  It was 64 and sunny outside that day.   No snow THERE.  But inside, well, it was beginning to look a lot like Christmas.

I continued walking.

You know how car dealers show their latest models in shopping malls sometimes?  Well, this one did too.

(Google Image)

Maserati

(Google Image)

Ferrari

(Google Image)

Lamborghini

I did not buy a car.  I did not buy a $200 scarf.  I didn’t even get the Clinique skin cream I needed from Macy’s.

I did get a small gadget from the only reasonable store there, a kitchen store.  It doesn’t work, though.  So I have to go back.

If you don’t hear from me for a while, please send snow shoes.

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December 27, 2011 · 0:00

Door Number Two!

The thing about dreams is that the crushing, the squelching, the termination of them is so much better in retrospect than when it actually happens.

At 17, I just knew I was going to be an actress.  A stage actress (because, don’t cha know, film work is not true acting. ) And I made that choice even before I realized that the camera brings out the psycho in me.

Now, I was very serious about this dream.  Of course I took my high school’s acting classes.  And, all snark aside, they were really good.  The Players were renown throughout the area for the professional quality of its high school actors.  And the accolades were well deserved.

Me?  Was I the star?  Was I the ingénue lead in all the productions during my high school years?  Was there a reason for my hubris?  Did my classmates look at me, remember my face and say to each other “someday we will remember when the very highly talented Miss Elyse went sledding outside our Algebra class (with that other fab actress, Ray) when she was supposed to be writing her math problems on the blackboard – because now,” sigh, “she’s a STAR.”   Oops, no, I mean they’d think “because now she is a highly successful stage ACTress.”

Uh, no they didn’t.  I was invariably an extra in those acclaimed productions.  At best I got a line or two.

But I had heart.  And in the theatRE, that’s all you need, right?  “There are no small parts, only small actors.”  Well, I was NOT a small actor.  I just got small parts.  And I was short and thin.  So I was small.  Shit.

But I DID get an audition.

Yup!  I had an audition in April of 1974, the spring of my senior year, for the Central School of Speech and Drama, an acting school in London.  Now, I was an hour outside of New York, and that might have been a wee bit easier to manage.  But hey, this was a dream, remember.  And I wanted London:  The Globe, The West End, Masterpiece TheatRE (even if it was done on film, it didn’t seem like it).

I was ready to take the first step in my path.

My audition was held in a building at Yale University.  I performed my comedy bit first, a monologue from a comedy so obscure that I have blotted it totally from my brain.

I sang “Adelaide’s Lament” under the guidance of my friend Sue, who actually played Adelaide in our school’s production of Guys and Dolls.  She was good.  So was I.  Well, not quite as good, but who’d notice?

I delivered my Juliet speech – hey, what do you want, Lady Macbeth?  I was 17!!!  I chose one that is rarely performed, the one where Juliet is about to take the sleeping potion and is seeing her cousin Tybalt’s ghost:

O, look! methinks I see my cousin’s ghost
Seeking out Romeo, that did spit his body
Upon a rapier’s point: stay, Tybalt, stay! (I loved that line)
Romeo, I come! this do I drink to thee.

I drank the potion, collapsed on the floor in the best Juliet evah.

I thanked the three faculty judges, repeated my name, made sure they had my completed application and my picture (although how could they forget me?)  I turned and walked to the door to leave.  Only there were two doors.

I opened the one on the right, walked through it and closed the door behind me.

It was a broom closet.

What do I do now, I wondered.  There was no script.  No stage directions.  No help of any kind.  I considered staying in the closet, but knew that eventually I had to come out.  After a minute that lasted forever, I re-opened the door and slunk out, saying a line I haven’t heard in too many successful plays:

“Ummm, that’s the broom closet.”

I opened the other door and left the room, closing my dream back in the room with the judges.

I know that if I’d just gone out singing and dancing, well, this chapter would be the opening scene of my life story.

Maybe it still is.  Cause it hasn’t been at all bad.

*****************

My thanks to MJ Monaghan, who posted a great piece today:  A Letter to my Guidance Counsellor.  Naturally I felt compelled to copy it.

Damn those copyright laws.

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December 22, 2011 · 0:00

Public Service Reprise********** Gizmos and Gadgets

It’s not because there is so much yet to do for Christmas that I’m reposting this piece.  Nope.  The elves never arrived so I’m done with Christmas.  Whatever isn’t done, well, you know.

But I thought it really important to re-post this piece from early June (since clearly only one person read it). I believe it is my CIVIC DUTY to inform you that, when you are tearing your hair out over your new gizmos and gadgets,  you are NOT alone.  AND THAT YOU SHOULD BE VERY CAREFUL.

Merry Christmas!

Happy Hanukkah!

Happy Whatever it is you want to celebrate!

******************************************************

GIZMOS AND GADGETS

In the last two years electronics manufacturers replaced  product instruction booklets with human tears — mine.

Until 2008, each computer, radio, TV, cellphone, or other electronic device had a little booklet that told all about the product I’d just bought.  Important things.  How to turn it on, for example.  It is not always that obvious, you know.  The booklet also told me how to turn it off, and how to mute it.  That last one’s especially important given the current crop of advertisements, mostly for other gadgets that won’t have booklets either.

Those were the days.  I remember fondly that I would pull out the instruction booklet first.  If I’d had any inkling that the lines and those pages would soon disappear, I would have treated it better.  But when I’d get something new, I’d push the manual aside, heartlessly toss it to the floor and completely ignore it.  I would turn on the gizmo and figure out exactly how to make it do just what I wanted done.  I could always figure out how to use it, even the most complicated ones.  The instructions were then put into the drawer next to the oven with the rest of the booklets.  That drawer collapsed in 2009 under the weight of instruction booklets for the 4,153 electronic devices we’ve purchased since we bought the house in 2002.

Now, I understand the need to cut back on paper usage.  I am all for saving rainforests I’ll never see, limiting emissions that may or may not be causing global warming.  I’m into all that sort of environmental crap, really I am.  But  they cut out my little booklets at exactly the same moment that they made the damn gizmos completely incomprehensible.

When manufacturers first removed my instruction booklets, I was brave.  I didn’t cry for the first three or four hours while I pushed every frickin’ button on my new cell phone, hoping in vain that one of them might just turn it “ON.” Naturally, the power button was the one I didn’t press because that had a picture of what clearly represented “OFF” and the bloomin’ button is RED.  Am I the only person who ever played Red Light/Green Light????  RED IS STOP.  GREEN IS GO.  Jeez.

OK, I know I should have gotten over this particular problem with my very first Windows product, but I didn’t.  And I won’t.  Not ever.  And I will never feel stupid for not pressing OFF when I want ON.

Still, I do try to not be a crybaby.  And sometimes I make it — for a while.

I didn’t cry for 6.5 hours when my new “plug in and use” laptop couldn’t be.  Equally exasperating, this laptop had no installed software that would have permitted use once it was plugged in.  As I sobbed to a Geek Squad Rep at Best Buy, I was told “there’s no software on it because people like to individualize.”

“I’m pretty sure,”  I said, pulling my head out of the paper bag I’d been breathing into, “that Neanderthals like me who buy products advertised to be ‘plugged in and used’ aren’t all that into individualization.”

It has gotten to the point where sometimes I don’t even bother crying.  I just throw stuff.  In fact, hospital emergency rooms see a 5-fold rise in shoulder, elbow, wrist and foot injuries during the holiday season as consumers throw, fling or kick their electronic Christmas gifts across the room, trying to miss the Christmas tree it took them so damn long to hang lights on.   Personally, I worry that I might decapitate relatives who wander into my house within 24 hours of a technology acquisition, when I’ve just sent something flying.

So all that is left for me to do now is cry.  And I do.  Every single time I buy something.  I’m considering going for a Guinness World Record for “Most electronics-related crying jags.”  Other contenders should just throw in the towel.  Or a tissue.

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