Simple Saturday: Engagements
Chrsitmas went pretty well this year on both sides of the family: my dad’s having a quaint dinner and splitting so some could go to Mass; my mom’s sitting around for 8 hours telling stories, with an entire 90 minutes dedicated to hilarious bathroom incidents. That’s about how it goes.
But even better is the fact that my cousin, Skyler, proposed Christmas night to his now-fiancee! It’s something I almost predicted to him, too, a long time ago. I said he’d get married by 21 and he just turned 22 at the beginning of the month.
I was feeling a bit smug until he told me that, if I was on the Price is Right, I’d be out of luck. : /
Do you have any Christmas stories to share? Please do!
Blog postponed for nog
What are you doing gallyvanting around the Internet reading this now? It’s Christmas Eve! I’ll be back Saturday or Sunday, so when you think of returning useless stuff you don’t want, remember to return to this blog, too! : )
…
Maybe that’s not the best reminder.
Athletes of the Year decided by pudgy, Dorito-stained newspeople
Some athletes come in 200 mph metal packaging
The Associated Press’s (AP) decisions for Male and Female Athlete of the Year are in. Voting for the awards is conducted through a number of news outlets that are part of the AP. If it works in other places like it does at my newspaper, you one day find a voting form lying on your desk and check a few boxes before handing it back in and getting back to important matters such as waiting for the co-worker on Donut Run to return.
Four-time NASCAR Sprint Cup winner Jimmie Johnson is this year’s top male athlete, making history as the first person to receive the award by sitting on his butt the entire time. Gary Kasparov and wheelchair rugby players have formally filed protest.
Tennis star Serena Williams earned Female Athelete of Year through her superior skills with a tennis ball and where she has threatened to shove it should you disagree with her.
Recent events have obviously shaken up the Athlete of the Year choices this year, which have perenially gone to “Tiger Woods” and “Tiger Woods if He Ever Got Gender Realignment Surgery and Came Back as Tigress Woods.”
The World finally admits it is against Bernie Mathers
KALAMAZOO, Mich.–At a press conference held outside the overpriced one-room apartment of Bernard “Bernie” Mathers, The World publically admitted its longtime disgust with the schlub and its ongoing attempts to make his life miserable at every turn.
“What Bernie has thought to be true and has told everyone he meets for years really is true: I, wholly, am against him,” The World said.
The admission is bittersweet to Mathers, who could be observed peeking through the tiny, cracked window of his sixth-floor-with-no-elevator room, ducking down in fear whenever The World even made an inkling of looking up toward him.
Mathers says he first started thinking The World might not have liked him on a fateful May day in seventh grade, as he looked out an open window, daydreaming of being out and enjoying the clear day, and was struck by a freak arc of lightning for the third time in his life.
“It was that third one that gave me my tic,” Mathers said, his right eye convulsing with memory of the event.
Small twists of fate continued to dog him, resulting in — among other misfortunes — 28 failed relationships, five audits by the IRS and 47 days in federal prison after somehow being confused for Sirhan Sirhan.
“I’ve also been bitten by 14 different rabid animals,” Mathers said. “The last one was a marmoset. They don’t even live around here.”
When later asked about the marmoset, The World shrugged.
“I was getting tired of the whole rabid animal routine and wanted to end on something memorable,” it said.
The World added that it was responsible for destroying Mathers’ dream of becoming an architect, arranging small, Rube Goldberg-like disasters that got him fired right down the job ladder to a position more to The World’s liking: a voluntary paid human test subject for a health and beauty firm. As a result of his history of experiments, he completely hairless, possesses a slight greenish tinge to his skin and periodically emits an odor that has been pinpointed as “a mix of turpentine and Roquefort cheese.”
Elsie Taylor, a neighbor who lives on a lower floor, as Mathers’ floor only contains his room, knows him well but was surprised by The World’s announcement.
“He’s always said The World was against him, but I just assumed he really meant a combination of poor choices and depression-induced failure to see opportunities had left him in a downward spiral,” she said. “Good thing I didn’t become a psychiatrist!”
The World said he would likely continue to be against Mathers, although opportunities are slimmer than they once were now that he mainly stays locked in his room surrounded by various editions of The Worst-Case Scenario Survival Handbook.
“It’s really not as satisfying as it used to be honestly,” The World said. “There’s more overall negativity in me these days. I think it’s part of my temperature fluctuations, or just people yappin’ too much about it. You know, I can’t even fully remember why I ever started on Bernie in the first place. I think it had something to do with his eyes. They were too small for his head, even as a kid. Made him look kinda like a domino. Ah, well.”
CDC fears contagion potential of Santa laps
ATLANTA, Ga.–As parents struggle to maintain as festive a germ-free bubble as possible around their children this holiday flu season, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) warn of a particularly high area of Christmas contagion: Santa laps.
Officials from the CDC tested several hundred Santa laps this season, ranging from the standard mall Santa to the guy who pulled the short straw at the office Christmas party. Results were said to be quite surprising.
“We found high levels of bacterial and viral contaminants on almost every Santa, specifically centered around the lap region,” said Roger Levenstein, director of pathology. “Perhaps the most poignant of tests was when we shone our special UV lights on the Santas to gauge the intensity of contamination. I can still see their… quadrants glowing whenever I close my eyes.”
According to the CDC, the fluff and softness inherent to most Santa suits provides an environment that not only retains disease, but allows it to thrive. One particularly old Santa suit from Macy’s held traces not only of the H1N1 virus, but the 1918 “Spanish Flu” and typhoid.
The CDC has ranked sitting on Santas’ laps as the most dangerous source of holiday-related contamination, above eating a gingerbread cookie from the bottom of Aunt Gertie’s purse and being licked directly on the lips by the camel at the Living Nativity.
Levenstein noted that, should your child be more than willing to risk sickness or death to let Santa know he wants all sorts of Bakugan prattle the poor sickly elf knows nothing about, certain precautions can be taken to reduce the possibility of contracting more than the Christmas spirit.
“Spray your child’s bottom with a generous dose of disinfectant spray,” he said. “About half a can to a can should be safe — just enough so that there’s the faintest audible squish when you set him or her down on the lap.”
Most places, seeing Levenstein’s Lysol method as a sacrifice in comfort to both the child and the Santa, have created their own solution: festive sanitary covers similar to those found in many public restrooms.
“They’re actually kind of cute,” assistant “elf” Melissa Snyder said, holding up a wreath-shaped cover and peering through the middle. “I’ve almost considered sneaking a few out and hanging one on my door, but at the end of the day they have to go into that new mailbox next to the one for Santa’s letters; the one marked ‘Biohazard.’ Kind of a bummer.”
Simple Saturday: Clap Trap
Last night I attended a swingin’ Christmas-themed performance by Denver & the Mile High Orchestra. I love big band stuff, and apparently a lot of other people in my region do as the theater was packed in spite of a major snowstorm barreling through the area all day.
While all kinds were there, my eye kept wandering across the aisle to check on a certain individual. She was an older lady–and a very nice one, I’m sure–but she suffered from some sort of affliction that left her completely incapable of clapping on beat. Perhaps it was from years of trying to work a Clapper with a short, or maybe she’d just been a death metal fan all her life. Regardless, when the band got people to clap, this poor soul would be trapped in some ethereal, ever-changing tempo in her head.
I tried my hardest. I willed my clapping to her from across the aisle, hoping she would pick it up. Every now and then our hands matched and I would give an inner whoop of joy, but like a broken clock she’d only be right once or twice per song and then be lost again into the ether. At one point I was even tempted to jump over behind her seat, firmly yet compassionately grasp her hands and clap them together correctly just to grant her a small taste of how wonderful it is to feel like you’re an actual part of a song.
Alas, I did not, and I will likely never see this rhythmically-impaired woman ever again. But if you know an individual such as her, take some time today to give them a gentle, 2/4 time pat on the back and show your support. Because while it’s fine to march to the beat of a different drummer, you should still be able to clap to the drummer right in front of you.
Curiosity killed the kumquat
Let’s step back a moment and take a look at what is simultaneously one of mankind’s greatest gifts and foulest curses: curiosity.
On the bright side, curiosity has led to many of mankind’s greatest feats and innovations. We never would have discovered gravity, learned to fly or landed on the moon were it not for curiosity. But on the other hand, curiosity has pulled us through some awful and embarrassing situations, thumbing its nose at us as we dust ourselves off and gleefully waiting for the next catastrophe to pique our interest, knowing we never learn.
Take this fruit, for example:
This is what Cthulu's heart looks like, only blacker
This macehead of a fruit is a durian, grown in Southeast Asia. It is a food that, by all intents and purposes, God tried to tell us not to eat. He covered it in spikes. He made the inner pulp look like the castoff of a liposuction procedure. He makes it grow so high in trees that when it ripens and drops, it could knock you out. And, above all, He made it smell. Bad. So bad that in many locales you aren’t allowed to take a durian on a bus or inside certain buildings.
And yet it’s a staple of Southeastern Asian cuisine, even going so far as to call it the “king of fruits.” It’s a paradox that makes me take a look back at this strange creation with a more open mind and conclude one thing: they have to be lying.
Of course they are. They have all these trees infesting their land growing spiked crap bombs and what are they going to do? Tell everyone how miserable the stuff is? That’d be awful for tourism! What you do is capitalize on the unwavering curiosity of man to draw them to your location for the purpose of placing something in their mouth God never intended to be there.
The proof for me resides in an episode of Bizarre Foods with Andrew Zimmern. Zimmern is a man outright paid to place things in his mouth God never intended to be there, and more often than not enjoys it. The durian was a natural draw for his trip to Thailand and while at a durian stand (yes, a durian stand) he asked some locals what they thought of the smell. The adults described it as “very good” or “special,” but there was one little boy in a Gatomon* shirt who they obviously hadn’t taught how to “appreciate” the durian in front of foreigners, holding his nose and running away from the fruit like it was the Bob Dylan Christmas album.
The time came for Zimmern to try it, and that he did. Now this was the time I was fully expecting him to chew for a bit, look to the camera and say how it wasn’t really half bad; that sometimes spiky, rotten-smelling death fruit can actually yield some redeeming qualities and we’d all engage in a cross-cultural, culinary Kumbaya.
He spat it out, right in front of the durian farmer. He never spits anything out.
So yeah, there are some out there who say they eat the stuff and like it; that you could like it, too. I don’t know who pays them off, but they’re liars, every last one of them. When a man who’s consumed the testicles of half of God’s creatures can’t swallow a piece of durian, you’re looking at something evil.
But with all that said, if you offered me an opportunity to try the durian for myself, would I do it? Even after all I’ve said about it?
Probably; and I bet you would, too. Curiosity has a place on its wall to hang pictures of our disgusted faces and, through some strange way we’re wired, there’s a sort of honor in being up there.
[*I don't know what's worse: the fact I actually know and retain this crap or the fact that I'm so willing to let you know I know it.]