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Child labor.
WE are in the middle of what I'll term "Fable of the (Backporch) Reconstruction".
WE (meaning Leslie) decided that WE (meaning me) need to tear down our backporch and rebuild it in a more stylish, less falling apart sort of way.
WE (again meaning me) put together a list of to-dos, that need to be to-done.
First item on that list was to call my dad. The call went something like this...
Me: "Hey Pop."
My Dad: "Well I ain't talked to you in a month... (insert Charlie Brown's teacher's voice here) wah, wah, how's Les? wah wah wah, wah wah wah wah, wah, How's RZ? wah wah wah, wah."
Me: "Uh, huh. Uh huh. Nuh uh."
Me: "So-uh, you don't have any plans on Saturday do ya? I'm building something and I need your...(said in a hushed, reverent tone) SUPERVISION"
As you can tell by that front loaded question, I haven't perfected the art of slyly asking for help. However, in retrospect, I must say that I closed the deal better than Trump ever could! A.) I appealed to his desire to what he does best... build. and B.) I honored his desire to tell me what to do.
My Dad: (in one quick breath) "Weeeeellllllllll-let-me-think-about-it-I'll-be-there-at-eight."
So Saturday morning rolls around and "Pop" shows up bright and early with hammer, crowbar, and a box of Krispy Kreme Doughnuts in hand ready to work. WE (yup, me again) are on a diet, so Leslie gives me this look that quietly whispers "I'll tear your arm off, beat you with it and dare you to bleed if you so much as sniff those".
I humbly pass on the doughnuts.
After Leslie, RZ and my dad "body slam" the doughnuts, and I quietly crunch on a dehydrated banana chip, WE (meaning my dad and I) get to the tasks du-jour.
My Dad: (as he cinches his toolbelt around his waist) "You go on and get up on top and tear off the shingles and decking. I'll be down here taking wah wah, wah."
Me: (looking up in the trees) "UP there!?!? Now Leonard (My dad's name is Leonard) your wife didn't raise an idiot. That's twenty-five feet up!"
My Dad: Gives this look that says "Yeah and I didn't raise a pussy either."
So I'm up top. On top of what is structurally a giant Frito. (no I didn't fall through, although that would've made for a much better post)
Anyway, we're in destruction mode for the rest of the morning and into the afternoon.
Around 3:30 I notice that I'm hot. I'm tired and frankly my "wussness" is starting to show through.
Me: "Ow CRAP! C-R-A-M-P!" This is the fourth time I've moaned in the past hour. It's become my mid-day battle cry.
~pause~
Me: "What say we call it and I buy you lunch?"
My Dad: "Wha'srong wi' you boy? Can't hang?"
I quietly realize that my 70 year-old, quad-bypassed, multi-angiogrammed, "old man" was working circles around me AND talking trash about it! Crappy part is, he knew it too!!!
Me: "Nah, I'm fine. No problem. I was just noticing your face. It's just awful red. I also noticed that I got my looks from Mom. Thank God." --Take that Dawg!
My Dad: "You can't hang."
Me: "I'm hangin'. I'm hangin'."
My Dad: "Why ya huffin' then?"
So this banter goes on for another hour or so, meanwhile we're working our asses to a nub. It's gotten competitive now... Who's going to out last who? Ironman vs. Son of Ironman.
Finally, I get the three syllables I've wanted to hear for the past three hours...."Woooooooo, Uh'm tarrred" (interpeted "Day's done.").
To which I reply, "c'mon be a man!". Now it's my turn to start cracking on him while we clean up.
Anyway, we call it a day. He gives me instructions on what we need to buy and what we need to do next.
It's around 5:00.
He leaves.
I go and get a shower, then I decide to lay down for a minute. It's now 5:30, Saturday afternoon. Sleep ensues.
I wake up 15 hours later, barely able to move. Muscles stiff and screaming, brain atrophied.
My dad is on the phone...
On the way to his morning walk...
Laughing.
3/29/2004 10:44:09 PM
F | R | I | E | N | D | S
"I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry..."
I'm friendless.
I went over to Friendster to see what all the hype is about. I signed up, then went looking for everybody, (hell anybody) I know.
I tried to find:
- friends: 0
- family: 0
- fellow bloggers: 1
- clients (past and present): 0
- various heads of state: 0
- Outlook Contact List: 0
- old emails: 0
- spammers: 0
- old schoolmates: 0
- aging pornstars: 0
Out of over 75+ contacts I found one person, one friend for which to "ster" with.
To top that, Friendster makes me ask that person if he/she IS really my friend. What kind of pressure is that putting on this person?
If he/she says "Yes" does that mean we're sharing toothbrushes? Needles?
And if he/she says "No" will that person be able to "let go" when that person reads my obit the next day?
The note left behind will read "DAMN YOU FRIENDSTER! My blood is on your hands!!!".
Will you be my friend?
Circle One:
Yes
No
That shit worked great in the third grade. I don't think it's that simple anymore.
Anyway.
So am I missing something here?
Am I on the blunt side of the cutting edge now?
God forbid too old?
Or is this still a work in progress?
Clue me in PLEASE!
Don't get me wrong I think it's a wonderful idea if you're socially plugged-in which (even though I subscribe to and read Wired Magazine) apparently I am not.
Oh and don't even get me started on the one that requires a freakin' invitation! That's sure to make your Id beg for a double shot of Thorazine.
Will you be my friend?
Click One:
Yes
No
3/26/2004 12:25:00 AM
I only thought I was running dry
The Patri-article - REM review
Paying attention
Signs of the apocolypse
My "Handler"
Old Girlfriends - Lynn/Sharon
More Lyritotis - Fatboy Slim - "got left behind"
Mile chase
The agency - successful failr
Galleries - def of failure
Baby sitting -
RC Airplanes/Stamps - Things to do when I get old
Random nation
Nikon obsession - need hlp
Odd and Heve - treehouse incident
the Massage
Melee at the movies
bonk on noggn - near death and the poodle incident
Me mozrt
Madlibs and the ass beating
Pilot lexicon
Jeff runs 13 miles?!?!
73 snow
I realize that none of this makes sense to you. These are entries in a notepad that I've been totin' around for the past week. The reason for the notepad is I get ideas for posts at the most inopportune moments (moment like standing in line, during The Passion, meetings, traffic, at work, on the john).
Now I have blog-fodder.
I'm going to see people eating zombies (eeww, on second glance I think this should read people-eating zombies) tonight, can't wait!
3/23/2004 12:23:32 AM
Who's keeping score?
Well as I was walking to the parking lot today I noticed the one, true, sure sign of spring...
The pink garbage cans.
Yup, pink garbage cans.
You see the fair city in which I live hosts the one, the only Macon, Georgia’s International Cherry Blossom Festival! Now don't make the mistake and confuse this with the The National Cherry Blossom Festival in Washington D.C. The National CB festival apparently is for pussies, 'cause it's just "National". Our Festival is INTERnational. That means our festival can beat up that festival any day of the week. That's right I said it. Got a problem with that? Huh? Problem? Besides, does the local Krystal in Washington D. C. serve up pink grits to commemorate the event, I think not... Pussies!
Each year around this time 275,000 Yoshino cherry trees bloom pink. An event that brings busload after busload of blue hairs into the area to gaze at God's glory, and which brings us folks who live in the area to say "It's just trees fucking. Get over it."
Well back to the pink garbage cans, our brain trust of local leaders somehow thought that highlighting the garbage of our fair city in "pepto-pink" would enhance be the proverbial "you know what" on top of everyone's already very merry cherry experience.
Forgive me father for I bash.
Another thought occured to me as I noticed the pink garbage cans and the resulting springy-ness in the air. With the weather warming up that means it's boat season.
Now there's only two things Ted Turner and I share... He made a fortune while in Georgia, and he was a captain of a boat.
I'm still in Georgia (sans fortune), and I was a captain of a boat. That's right ladies and gentlemen, I was a captain/owner/operator of a fifteen foot Boston Whaler "Rage" jet boat, with a 115 horsepower OMC engine.
I know, I know, you're thinking to yourself:
A.) can this guy amaze me any more?
B.) Jesus! his manliness is awe inspiring, nay dare I say captivating!?!
C.) should I try and not slip on the testosterone that seems to puddle around his feet?
Well close your ajared mouth, because I'm here to tell you that boat ownership had me crying like a baby on several occasions.
To start with, I'm sure you've heard the old adage before that "a boat is a hole in the water that you throw money in". That's actually doublespeak, church-talk if you will. What they're actually saying here is "oh, you're a boat owner? soup line's over there... dumb fuck."
Oh man did we ever buy into that dream. We were at a boat show in January of '94 when we signed the papers. It was a severely proud moment for Leslie and I when we inked that contract. The dealer was so nice, he even threw in a trailer to sweeten the deal. Gee, what heck of a guy! We had bought a boat. Not just any boat, a Boston Whaler. Not just any Boston Whaler, but a JET boat-- how cool is that? On the ride home after we did the deal we kept laughing and saying to ourselves "we got a Way-luh... A By-stun Way-Luh!" Our doo-doo refused to stink for a month.
We signed for the boat in January. I went to pick the boat up from the dealer a few weeks later in February.
Aaaahhh, there was my boat.
All shiny and glistening and.... snow covered!?!?
I picked up the boat the only day it snowed in 1994.
Now I had to drive the 150+ miles back home, through Atlanta traffic, in ice and snow.
Did I mention the fact that I had never towed anything before? And did I mention that normally I'm an easy going kinda guy, but put me behind the wheel and I become a type-a, cursing, bird-shooting, terrorist of the road. I'm better now, but back then I was like that hockey-masked character in Mad Max 2-- "Maniac" was a badge I wore (wore huh, more like war) with pride.
Anyway, I made it home. Boat, truck and self intact. I did have a nervous twitch in my eye for a good week afterward, but it eventually smoothed out.
Now I have a boat in my garage where my truck used to sit.
I pull the boat out every week and wash the damned thing. I must have washed it six or seven times before I put it in water the first time. I would sit in it and pretend to be on the high seas like a kid. I adored that craft. I cherished the thought of the day that I would eventually make our maiden voyage, the wind in my hair-- the over-spray of the water. I was like a wet-dreaming teenager.
Well when that day came, I was scared. I had never boated. I didn't know what to do. I mentioned earlier that the boat was a jet-boat. A jet-boat is much like a jet-ski, only boatier. Basically, it has a multi-horsepowered Hoover vacuum that sucks in water and blows it out the back with serious force. That force propels the boat forward, the angle of said force steers the boat. Keep the physics of this in mind, you'll understand why in a minute.
Anyway, back to my virgin voyage. We're out on the lake, miles away from the marina, kicking up rooster-tails, jumping wakes, skiing, kneeboarding, laughing and giggling and just wetting our swimsuits 'cause we're having such a grand time. Then the current kneeboarder hits a wake then nosedive splats into the lake. No problem, I just circle around and pick him up.
Oops, I just ran over the tow rope.
Oops, the rope just got suck up into the intake of the jet.
Oops, the rope has wound around the shaft of the jet.
Oops, the engine has stalled.
Oops, it was a nylon rope.
Oops, the friction melted the rope to the shaft.
We're in a pretty desolate part of the lake, we waited for an hour or so before somebody came along and when they did I flagged them down and ask them for a tow back to the marina. They obliged.
When we finally got back to the marina and surveyed the damage I realized that the next time the boat would see water was after a visit to the shop.
Boat - 1
Me - 0
Fast forward a few weeks later...
Now its the second time I've had it on water.
I got the boat back from the shop, minus three hundred dollars.
I'm still loving my boat though. Granted I had an initial minor setback, but I'm over it now.
The weather is a bit warmer, now it's prime boating time!
Leslie, RZ and I head for the lake.
When we get there I go through a pre-launch checklist that I'd devised.
Bilge? Check.
Fuel? Check.
Oil? Check.
Exhaust fan? Check.
(I get distracted for a second.)
Life Preservers? Check.
Lunch? Check.
Coppertone? Check.
and so on.
Ready?
I crank it and my baby humms to life.
We leave the dock, starboard side of course (I don't know what it means it just sounds good and nautical.) and I throw the throttle down and we're bookin'. We're tooling around, cutting up, just having a fine time.
Then after about twenty minutes I notice that "she's a bit sluggish".
And she's not humming, she's growling.
And she's really slow now.
I decide to do what all men do when faced with a mechanical quandary... I pop the hood.
As soon as I lift the cover to the engine compartment the problem is staring me right in the face. The engine is almost completely under water. When I had gotten distracted earlier, I missed the part about the "plugs". The plugs are simply stoppers in a drain. You take them out when you're out of the water. You put them in BEFORE you go into the water. Bawnk on the forehead!
We get back to the dock (port side, I guess) and we trudge the multi-ton, waterlogged beast onto the trailer and out of the water, home to dry-dock.
Oh well, Maybe another day.
Boat - 2
Me - 0
I'm not going to recount every bad experience I had with that sexy hunk of fiberglass and chrome, but I shit thee not, every single time (22 times total) I launched I had a disaster. Out of the 22 times I had it in the water I got towed back 9 times.
Oh remember I said to keep the physics in mind? That swell boat dealer-- you know the one who threw in the trailer to sweeten the deal. Well come to find out that trailer was a couple of sizes too small for that boat. Trying to load a boat onto a trailer that is too small and said boat has: no control at low speed (it steered by thrust remember) and no reverse to speak of was a task of epic proportions. A three man job, that I usually had to do by myself. What should have been a 3 minute end of day manuever, was an ordeal that would take me the better part of an hour. Usually with a crowd of onlookers on the docks snickering at me. It was a humilating chore that I dreaded before I would even start the day! The best analogy I can give you regarding putting that boat on that trailer was like trying to slip a condom onto an moose.
Boat - 22
Me - 0
After a couple of years, even though I loved her dearly, I had to get rid of her.
After I sold her, I decided to add insult to injury and do a post-mortem accounting job on what each trip into the water cost. I added up the cost of the boat, the finance charges, taxes, tag, supplies, fuel cost, repair cost, and storage/marine charges, then I divided that total by the number of times I took it out to the lake.
Are you ready for this? Over $1100 per outing.
Yup, over one-thousand, one-hundred dollars. Can I get an amen?!?!
Now, back to the soup kitchen.
Amen.
3/18/2004 12:16:40 AM
Blah, Blah, Blahg... I've been lazy.
Dang!
I was looking over my posts for the past few weeks and I realized I've been copping out as far as posting anything with revelance or value. I've been covered up at work and by the time I get home the red couch and the remote has had my attention WAAAYY more than anything else. My apologies.
I think I've mentioned it before that I usually write late at night after Leslie and RZ have fallen asleep, but lately I've been crashing before them.
Oddly enough, I miss writing. I miss writing, much like I would miss talking to Leslie if that ever happened.
Anyway, thanks for stopping by and posting comments (or not) and thanks being part of my muse. I really am enjoying my time in the blogosphere! (Jesus Christ I can't believe I just said blogosphere. ACK, SPEW!!!)
3/17/2004 12:47:36 PM
Quick question...
Is it me or has anyone else noticed how long it takes for this site to come up? I'm on DSL at the office (and cable at home) and whenever I bop in to R80o.com it seems to take 30 to 45 seconds to load. I just want to find out if other folks are having the same problem.
Update:
I just deleted a bit of errant javascript code. In doing so, the access time seems to have improved. At least on this side of the monitor. Let me know if it's still slow.
3/15/2004 01:42:56 PM
This is so cool!
Mr. Picassohead
Have fun.
Here's my first attempt...
ps- Thanks for the link Chris!
3/12/2004 12:44:29 PM
I wasn't trying to be cryptic...
Well my brush with famedom has drawn to a close. My No Ping entry finally got the boot over at Blogmadness. Congrats Mir! Actually I'm REALLY blown away that the post got as far as it did! Thanks to everybody that took the time to go over and vote.
I was talking to a friend the other night about blog names and the conversation turned to R80o. Given our conversation I thought it might be a good idea to fill you in on why I chose R80o.
First of all if you didn't already know, it's pronounced "radio". I came up with the name back when Internet radio was just starting to take off (and way before RIAA reared its ugly head). I wanted to setup and run an "all 80's" station. The way I wanted to do it is similiar to the way the guys over at www.radioio.com have done it. Radioio is a station I recommend HIGHLY!!!
Well I didn't do the station thing, and basically forgot about the name.
Then a while back (as a hobby) I tried selling 80's paraphernalia on Ebay. That idea bombed, but only after I had registered the domain name. So I have the r80o.com URL and nothing to do with it. I had another website that was "my site", but I can't say I did much with it either. Not much on content, definitely not much on verbage. Then I started blogging back in September, and well here I am.
Regarding the illustration of the dog in the title line, she's a combination of our dog "Holestein" (a.k.a. "Holy" thus the halo) and this dog...
His name is "Nipper". By the way, "Nipper" was the RCA Radio icon from way back in the 1920's and 30's.
Anyway, thanks for letting me fill in the details.
______________________________________________
On a separate note, I was over at the Crapola Web Translator translating my blog into various dialects. Personally I prefer the ebonics translation. What'd you think?
3/9/2004 09:01:21 PM
I Feel Like Such a Vote Whore
Blgmadness is going strong, and as of this writing I'm still in the fray. Please take a minute place and your vote. Here's
a link to the finals.
__________________
On another note, I've found that blood thinners make really bad drink mixers.
Les and I went to a wedding last night. At the reception I had four glasses of wine over about a two and a half hour period. I'm normally not a wine drinker, but it was either wine or beer and I'm even less of a beer drinker. My drink of choice is either scotch or Canadian whiskey. I don't drink that often but I have found that when I do "tie on a big one", these two liquors won't give me a hangover.
Anyway back to last night, an incredi-buzz hit me minutes after the first glass. By my third glass I was on auto-pilot. Thank God I didn't puke or make an ass out of myself (so sayeth the Leslie) but I don't recall but tiny chunks of time and space from last night. I remember saying to Les while we were on the dance floor "...this is where it gets blogworthy..." But now I don't remember why. Thinking back there were several things that I could base a post on, on several occasions I remember making mental notes about things that were happening only to forget them all now.
And this morning, I've got a hangover that would bring a full grown yak to his knees. It's 2:30 in the afternoon, I still feel like crap, I have positional vertigo, and I feel like I could wretch-vomit my spleen out.
The only thing I can think that caused this sort of reaction is I started taking blood-thinners a week ago. I didn't get any warnings not to drink though.
Or maybe Leslie slipped me a roofie. Come to think of it I may have had sex last night.
3/7/2004 01:53:23 PM
Riddle Me This Batman...
In the vien of lame, cop-out posts (re: last post) I offer up this latest entry:
What's big,
Green,
Fuzzy,
and will kill you if it drops out of a tree and bonks you on the head?...
Give up?
Back in a bit.
3/6/2004 11:02:28 AM
Rerun.
You may have seen this post before, if so my apologies. Feel free to turn the channel.
March 4th: I was driving around today. The sun was shining, the temp was in the low 70's, the wind was blowing through my curly lock. I said to myself "this is a great day for a road trip."
As soon as I said it. I caught myself.
Later on this evening I decided to re-read this post to get over my need to wander.
________________________________________________________
What the fuck was I thinking?!? I must've been out of my damned mind.
When I was single and had the world by the balls, disposable income as well as disposable time I would take road-trips for my sanity breaks. I'd hop in my car and scoot. I'd go to the mountains, to the coast, the swamp, just about anywhere. I'd usually just take off by myself and my dog of course along with a total buttload of music to keep my head clear while I was driving. By the time I'd get back I was as relaxed as if I'd had a week off.
One long July 4th weekend after work me and a buddy (Joe) from work was at the pub having a few beers when I started detailling the roadtrips that I had taken. After several beers each we shared an epiphany, "It's Friday night. It's a three day weekend. We need to road-load, NOW! RIGHT NOW!!!". We leave the bar in my 1986 Mazda RX-7, go by the local BP buy a case of beer and fill-up the tank.
"Which way?" Joe ask. "Let's go west." I say, so we crank-up and head on our merry way.
Keep in mind that we start our magical journey in Georgia.
It's 11:45pm Friday night. We don't have to be back at work until Tuesday morning at 8 am. We can take a BIG roadtrip!
Georgia + West = Alabama. We drive non-stop 'til we're almost passing out around 5:30 Saturday morning. We stop on a pier overlooking the Gulf of Mexico down around Mobile, Alabama. We sit in stunned silence for about a half an hour, we regroup then decide to continue on to New Orleans. We get to New Orleans early, like 7'ish I'd say. I'd been to the Big Easy before and had eaten at Cafe Dumond. I thought it'd be kind of cool to eat beignets, tank up on coffee, sober up and then spend the rest of the weekend partying in N.O.
Joe had a "better idea".
"Why don't we make a marathon out of this, somethin' to tell our grandkids about. Why don't we see how far we can go?". I think about it for about 6 seconds and realize this is the most incredible idea I've ever heard! Joe is a genius, or at least inspired. So we finish up our french doughnuts and coffee and decide to go north " 'cause, I've always wanted to go over that long fucking bridge." For those of you who suck at geography lake Pontchartrain is north of New Orleans and the lake Pontchartrain bridge is 20 something miles long. It truly is a "long fucking bridge". We get across the bridge and decide to keep our course north. We go back into Mississippi, through Jackson. Then onward to Memphis Tennessee. Remember we've only stopped a couple of times so far, on the pier in Mobile, in New Orleans for coffee and umpteen dozen pee breaks. We get into Memphis. We stop to stretch our legs and look around the town. It's mid-to-late Saturday afternoon by now. We're out of the car about 30 minutes when we decide we want to see that arch. After all the miles we've been so far that arch doesn't seem that far away. It's in St. Louis. Missouri. In retrospect, we were out of our minds. We had gone from central Georgia, southwest to New Orleans and Now were heading north for St. Lou.
We get into St. Louis around 9-10pm on Saturday night. We've got that "been on the road too long buzz" ringing in our heads.
We're tired. We stink. And guess what, we gave no thought when we left to:
a. A change of clothes.
b. A change of underwear.
c. Hygeine tools (aka toothbrush, hairbrush, deo).
We figured (in our drunken stupor the night before) when we get to a place we want to stay, we'll just buy what we need then. What we didn't count on was... we would never get to where we were going.
Back to St. Louis, we're layed out on the grass under the arch like a couple of homeless guys. We fall asleep for a couple of minutes, then get our "second wind".
It's roughly 11 pm on Saturday night. Our brilliant minds decide to head to Chicago.
We get to Bloomington, Illinois and pass out in a rest stop. I'm not sure if you've ever had the opportunity to try and sleep in an RX-7. Basically, you don't. The best analogy I can give is what I imagine trying to sleep in a Cambodian prison camp would be like.
We tried to snooze for a couple of hours without much luck.
Sunday Morning roughly 6am: On the road again. We're off to Chicago. We hit Chicago, scratch that, we breeze through Chicago's South Side around 9:30 - 10am. Onward, we go through Indiana, into Michigan. On Sunday afternoon/early evening we realize that not only do we smell, but we S.M.E.L.L.. Somewhere west of Detroit we came across a KOA campground that had a lake. We turned into that place, stripped down to our underwear and took a bath in that lake. God that was a cold lake!
After the lake bath, we load back up and off we go to Detroit.
We go through Detroit, heading east into Ontario, Canada. We continue east. Through Canada. We get over to the Canadian Side of Niagra Falls and do 45 minutes of site seeing.
Then we're off again, south. Here we come Buffalo, New York. We go through Buffalo late. By this time it's in the wee hours of Monday morning. We hit another rest area and sleep.
We don't really sleep, but experience deep unconscienceness. I'm not sure if I can relate to you how wasted tired I am. We come to around 7:30 am Monday. Keep in mind we have to be at work Tuesday morning at 8am.
I'm going to try and make the rest of this story short. Try and keep up.
Buffalo => Pittsburgh
Pittsburgh => West Virginia
West Virginia => Virginia
Virginia => North Carolina
<<<< We get lost in North Carolina for a couple of hours >>>>
North Carolina => South Carolina
South Carolina => Atlanta
Atlanta => Warner Robins
Warner Robins (to drop off Joe) => Macon (home)
It's now 7:15 am Tuesday Morning.
I've got to be at work in 45 minutes.
No call ins, no sick days allowed.
Why? Because (at the time) I worked for UPS.
<<<< IRONY ALERT>>>>
I have to drive a fucking truck 200 miles that day.
3/3/2004 11:03:26 PM
If my day goes the way the past half hour has, I'll be shootin' heroin by noon!
RZ and I had another Emotional Celebrity DeathMatch this morning on the way school. Tears ensued.
Then in the midst of the the melee, blue lights go off in my rear view mirror.
I pull over and RZ shouts "what are you DOING?"
I calmly announce "Getting a ticket."
[side note:] Is it me, or does everybody's colon go into "rapid evac" mode when they see the blue lights in the mirror? Just curious.
The roman emperor of slight stature officer gets out of his chariot copmobile, walks up to my car, and with his hand on his holster, and in a commanding cop voice says "Le' me see yer lyesunse an' proof uh ans-shernce." So I give him my license and my State Farm card.
In the most respectful "yes sir, pardon me sir, I'm a cockroach in your day sir" voice I could muster, I ask "what'd I do?".
He tells me to "get ow-chur vay-hickle".
I comply.
Then he walks behind my ride and begins to explain the reason he stopped me was that my "stick-uh" was stuck in the wrong place on my tag. Then he starts telling me of the procedure the local authorities go through when they look at someone's car tag. He said where I had stuck my 2004 "stick-uh" was not in "cuhm-pli'nce". Then he tells me how and where the "stick-uh" should have been applied.
In my best Eddie Haskell voice I thank him for letting me know, and ask him what do I need to do to correct the problem. He paused, look at me as if I ask him what the gross national product of Portugal was, continued to pause. Then he said "I'm jus' gawna write ya uh wawnin' ". Then he told me to "hava seat back in yer vay-hickle".
I comply.
After 7 or 8 hard-stares from RZ and 10 minutes he returns with my cards and the "courtesy warning". At this point I see an great opportunity for a dig... "Thanks again for letting me know about this, and thanks for just the warning, but what do I have to do make this right?"
He says "You jus' gotta caw th' Day Em Vay. You hava good day now. Hear."
_______________________
By the way, for those of you that don't speak fluent "suh-thuhn". Let me know, I'll update with a glossary.
3/3/2004 09:57:06 AM
My wife. My poor, poor, wife.
Leslie suffers from a genetic abnormality-- dyslistenia.
You see she can hear the words to a song, then her brain will play scrabble with the words (similiar to dyslexia I'm sure) then she'll sing words that make absolutely no sense whatsoever.
Who doesn't remember Kim Carnes' 80's classic hit "Betty Davis Eyes." You know the line where Kim Carnes sings "...She's Got Betty Davis Eyes.", Leslie sings "She's Got Better Days In Sight" in perfect harmony with Ms. Carnes. Granted there is the sight correlation but that's it.
Another song she "just up and butchers the hell out of" is that great 70's Steve Miller Band hit "Jet Airliner". The lyrics go something like this: "Oh, Oh big ol' jet airliner Don't carry me too far away, Oh, Oh big ol' jet airliner Cause it's here that I've got to stay". With the seriousness of an Elvis impersonator Les' will sing [I shit you not], **"Oh, oh big ol' Jap in a lineup don't carry me too far away, Oh, Oh big ol' Jap in a lineup Cause it's here that I've got to stay." Her voice is beautiful, perfect pitch, perfect tone. But lyrics... out the freakin' door! It's sad.
There are many others songs that my beloved has shredded. These are just a couple off the top of my head.
Unfortunately, I'm afraid RZ has inherited the same defect. This past Christmas I noticed her trying to sing "Silent Night". Carnage! Sheer carnage!
Please put them in your prayers.
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**[sidebar] In no way is this intended to be an ethnic slur! This is what the poor girl hears! [end sidebar]
3/2/2004 12:07:37 AM
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