Yes, that’s the actual fortune I got at the Chinese buffet this weekend:
Whaddaya think? Should I play the lottery numbers on the back? I’m feeling lucky… or not…
Author: Diane Henders
Weapons Of Ass Destruction
So, this morning I was thinking about toilet paper. (Never mind what I was doing at the time.) And it occurred to me that toilet paper is the keystone to civilized behaviour in the western hemisphere.
You know I’m right. All you have to do is walk into a public washroom that’s out of toilet paper, and you realize how superficial our veneer of civilization really is.
I know lots of countries get along just fine without TP, but I want to be there to see the expression on the first westerner who finds nothing but a pitcher of water in the bathroom instead of a cottony-soft roll. Or, hell, I’ll settle for seeing their faces while they watch this video.
You know what bothers me most about this? Water might be “very-very clean”, but it’s also very-very wet. And there’s nothing to dry off with… except maybe the hand towel… if there is one… not that I’d want to touch it…
Yep, toilet paper rules the modern western world. All our technological toys are as nothing next to it. People may profess utter dependence on their electronic devices, but would you rather be caught without your technology or without toilet paper? I’m thinking that sleek new iPhone isn’t very absorbent.
Centuries ago, people used whatever was at hand. Apparently wealthy Romans used silk or goose necks. (I presume the necks were no longer attached to the geese. I’ve been around geese enough to know you don’t wanna let those suckers anywhere near your tender bits.)
Grass, leaves, and pine cones worked for indigenous people, though I assume their elders passed down critical wisdom like ‘leaves of three, let it be’ and ‘use the pine cone with the direction of the scales unless you need a hemorrhoidectomy’.
In earlier America, corn cobs were a common choice. Apparently they were quite comfortable when fresh, but after they dried they became weapons of ass destruction. No wonder everyone heaved a sigh of relief when Sears and Eaton’s started printing their mail-order catalogues.
Today, toilet paper engineers are the unsung heroes of the western world. These amazing folks create a product that’s strong enough to withstand zealous scrubbing of regions better left undescribed, yet designed to fall to pieces seconds after contacting water so your toilet doesn’t plug. Soft enough to prevent abrasion, yet not so soft as to leave Klingons circling Uranus.
And it’s not just the engineers who should be lauded. Then there’s the next step: convincing consumers to buy. First the marketing geniuses have to come up with umpteen ways to say ‘our product wipes your ass best’ while avoiding any scatological reference whatsoever.
Then they create ads inexplicably featuring fluffy kittens and cartoon bears. Those commercials bring out the worst in me. Every time I see them, I think of the joke about the bear and the bunny taking a dump side by side in the forest. The bear turns to the bunny and says, “Do you have a problem with shit sticking to your fur?”. The bunny says, “No”, and the bear says, “Good!”, grabs the bunny and wipes his ass with it.
I can just see the tagline: “Soft as a bunny, strong as a bear”.
And now you know what it’s like to live inside my brain.
Sorry about that…
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I’m driving 800 miles again today so I won’t be able to respond to comments until tomorrow. “Talk” to you then! 🙂
Progress…
A couple of days ago when I was lying helpless in a small dark room with a couple of dozen needles stuck in various parts of my body, I began to reflect on the state of modern medical science.
If you’re thinking that the combination of claustrophobia and needles might not to be conducive to philosophical reflection, you’re right. The truth is I was trying to distract myself; not only from the pain and psychological discomfort, but also from the galling knowledge that I was paying for the privilege of enduring both.
I’ve been getting acupuncture on my arm in a futile attempt to speed its healing from my latest kickboxing injury. (I should note that it’s my fault the acupuncture isn’t working as well as it should. I’ve discovered it tends to be considerably less effective if I spend four or five hours digging dirt and moving heavy rocks immediately afterward.)
No; the acupuncture works well when I behave myself… but it’s ironic that with all of today’s cutting-edge medical science, the most effective treatment for tendonitis is 2,000 years old. With fancy diagnostic machines and a lot of fiddling around, today’s doctors can tell me exactly which tendons are inflamed… but they still can’t fix them without sticking needles into me.
When I considered it, I realized most physiotherapy is actually a little on the barbaric side:
- Ice and heat applied alternately to create the maximum possible discomfort.
- TENS, which is basically electrocuting the sore spot.
- Massage and active release techniques, which both boil down to ‘find the place that hurts the most and press really hard on it’.
- And ultrasound, which is like hitting the sore spot with a zillion teensy-weensy invisible hammers. With blue slime as an added bonus.
The truth is we really haven’t even come very far from our Neolithic ancestors 6,000 years ago. ‘Way back then, they used a technique called ‘trephining’ to drill holes in people’s skulls and let the bad out. Sometimes the patients even survived.
Today we do pretty much the same thing for intracranial pressure, only with less screaming thanks to anaesthetics, and a slightly better survival rate thanks to antibiotics. But we’re still drilling holes in people’s skulls, and we’re still trying to make their sore spots feel better by sticking needles in them. The more things change, the more they stay the same…
And speaking of relieving intracranial pressure, here’s one thing off my mind: The cover art is done for Book 8, and it even has a title! And it’s halfway through the beta-reading process with only one minor revision so far. Woohoo!
Here it is:
Railroaded into acting as a secret agent, Aydan Kelly only wants to return to her peaceful former existence. But when trusted co-workers go missing along with a deadly weapon prototype, she’s forced to take over the investigation to protect them from an agent with a personal vendetta.
And when a violent criminal organization abducts her lover, Aydan discovers exactly how far she’s willing to push the limits of her new role. The bad guys are about to learn an important lesson: Don’t piss off a middle-aged bookkeeper.
So what’s on your mind this week? Go ahead, let off some pressure! And… has anybody got a miracle cure for tendonitis besides “Stop doing stupid things and let it heal”?
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I’m on the road today so I won’t be able to respond to comments until tomorrow. I’ll look forward to “talking” to you then!
And That Was My Week
The week after I finish a book is always interesting. During the final stages, I’m so immersed in writing that everything else just… goes away. Including my brain. And it hasn’t come back yet.
I tried to come up with a coherent blog post and instead spent an hour staring into space and mumbling non sequiturs. So I’m just gonna go with that.
Here’s what my week was like, in no particular order:
Ironic: This week I kickboxed, lifted weights, planted a few thousand square feet of garden, shifted a ton of garden soil, mowed the lawn, did some minor home renovations, and generally abused every muscle in my body. I was fine. Then I hurt my back… bellydancing.
Efficient: I finally discovered the secret to efficiency: a to-do list. In the morning I wrote a list of all the things I wanted to get done during the day. Then at the end of the day, I wrote “Tomorrow” after the “To-Do” title. Voila! Efficiency. Now I don’t have to make another to-do list.
Fashionable: In my closet, I have a skirt… hey, don’t laugh! I really do own a skirt. It’s a broomstick skirt, which, for the uninitiated, is a skirt that looks as though you’ve rolled it up in a ball and slept on it for a couple of months before wearing it. It suits my attitude toward dress-up clothing just fine. I unearthed it a while ago, shook it out, and then hung it tenderly back in my closet. You never know when I might need an easy-to-care-for skirt.
Oblivious: I showed the above skirt to a friend about a month ago, and she said, “Oh, what a great skirt! I remember when those were in style!” Then the conversation moved to other topics. Just yesterday it filtered through my thick skull that my beloved skirt had been insulted…
Illogical: About six weeks ago I hurt my arm kickboxing. So I ignored it, because everything gets better sooner or later, right? But it kept hurting, and a couple of weeks ago I threw a punch and ouch! So I went in at the beginning of the week and got a diagnosis. Apparently I have tennis elbow. From kickboxing. Makes perfect sense. (Fortunately muay thai allows strikes from fists, feet, elbows, and knees, so I can still train. Otherwise this heading would be “Illogical and Cranky”.)
Absent-Minded: I went for a walk, and half a mile down the sidewalk my brain suddenly shrieked: “Wait! Did I forget my pants?!?” The relief was indescribable when I looked down to discover that I was actually dressed. The subsequent question, “Are they done up?” was anti-climactic by comparison. Unfortunately, accidentally going sans pants isn’t an inconceivable scenario for me. I’m not in the habit of wandering around half-naked, but when I’m this distracted there’s always a possibility that I might begin to change clothes and just forget to finish the job.
Gluttonous: Because the universe has a cruel sense of humour, it was my week to be Designated Driver. So I haven’t even had a beer to celebrate finishing Book 8, but I compensated by eating a candy apple and a triple-chocolate ice cream cone that was as big as my head. And I have plans for beer this weekend, so all is well in my world.
And that was my week. How was yours?
Chair Demons
I’d like to think it’s not just me. Doesn’t everybody harbour a few items in their home which, when considered out of context (which is to say, ‘by any sane human being’), are just a little… um… creepy?
Some things are intentionally creepy, and that’s okay. For instance, I love this candle-holding sculpture my sister gave me years ago: As the candle flickers, its eyes glow and seem to follow you around the room.
Totally creepy, but in a good way.
In the ‘that’s odd’ category of creepy, I also own a stuffed beaver. *insert the revolting double entendre of your choice here*
No, really, it’s a child’s toy. I’m not sure I’d want to meet the twisted toymaker who one day looked up from his designs of cute, cuddly bunnies and bears and thought, “We need beavers!”
…Okay, I realize most guys have that revelation at some point in their life, but this guy followed it to its logical conclusion: “Everybody needs beavers!” And here’s the result:
He’s cuddly-soft, and his name is Bob. Don’t ask.
Moving on up the ‘disturbing’ scale, I also own two rubber chickens that reside in the planter in my living room. Well, to be technically accurate, one’s rubber and the other is silicone, which is even grosser than rubber because it’s all wobbly and floppy.
But the rubber one makes up for its deficiency in the gross-out department, because:
- Its gaping beak is disturbingly reminiscent of a blow-up doll; and
- It squawks when squeezed – a horrible half-strangled wail like bagpipes possessed by the spirit of an evil piper who died in the throes of an asthma attack.
I’m not sure which bothers me more, the gaping beak of the big one or the flaccid-phallus appearance of the little one…
But the top ‘Creepy and Disturbing’ award goes to our dining room furniture. You’d think it would be pretty difficult to make shudder-worthy dining chairs. And I’m not talking about physical discomfort.
No, I’m talking about the kind of creep factor that sends a shiver down your spine and makes you question whether you really want to turn your back on the item in question. I mean, seriously, what sick and deranged mind thought it would be a good idea to carve this on the back of a dining-room chair?
Would you turn your back on this?
It looks like one of the minor demons from hell, perched at exactly the right height to chew a crippling chunk out of your spinal cord with its fiendishly gaping mouth. Then once you’re incapacitated, who knows what it might do?
This dining-room set belonged to my husband’s grandparents, and as far as I know they lived healthy, normal lives unmolested by denizens of the Pit… but these chairs give me the shivers anyway. I’ve lived with them for over a decade by convincing myself that, like gargoyles, they’re fierce guardians of our home. If anybody ever threatens us, look out! The chair demons will get them!
But that only works if I don’t think about it too much…
Anybody else harbouring satanic furniture or other creepy items?
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Woohoo! I’ve finished the draft for Book 8, and it’ll be off to my beta readers / editors this week!
The Secret Of Happiness…
I’m pushing to finish Book 8 this week and I don’t have any wordpower (or brain power) to spare, so it’s cartoon time:
** Also, good beer is a major part of the secret of happiness.
Snow Fun
For those who weren’t privy to my whining on Facebook this weekend, we just had a foot of snow:
Eight inches after the first twelve hours. Drinks on the deck are postponed until further notice.
It’s depressing to get snow in May, but it’s not unheard-of here in Calgary. And I’d rather have it now than in the middle of August… which has also happened:
I built this guy on August 20, 1992.
Aside from griping of epic proportions, Calgarians have more or less ignored the snow and gotten on with life. After all, we know it’ll probably snow again in a couple of weeks – it’s practically a tradition to get snow on the May long weekend. But it’s okay, because snowbanks are a great place to keep your beer nice and frosty while you’re camping.
(Yes, we’re Canadian. We push our lawn chairs into the snowbanks and sit around the campfire drinking cold beer on the long weekend regardless of the weather.)
The funny part is that the snow was preceded by rain, and it was the rain that totally messed people up. You’d think it had never rained before. Drivers bumbled through red lights, turned from the wrong lane, inexplicably slowed to a crawl in the middle of the road, and generally made me wish for a crate of Zombie Bullets and a Gatling gun. I don’t know what it is about rain that makes Calgary drivers so painfully stupid, but my best guess is that IQ points are water-soluble. Lucky it doesn’t rain very often here.
Someone once said, “Marriage is all about give and take: Give blame; take credit”, so I blamed Hubby for the snow.
In the first place, he fired up the motorcycle a few weeks ago, which is a sure-fire way to make it snow. Then he started talking about outdoor archery tournaments, and our fate was sealed.
I did my best to trick the weather into thinking it was okay to warm up: I left my snow tires on the car and the snow shovels by the back door. But it wasn’t enough. Hubby’s bad juju trumped my feeble efforts.
Interestingly, the only time Hubby ever has bad luck with weather is here at home. When we’re travelling, he’s a good-luck charm. We often visit Vancouver Island in the middle of winter, and its coastal winter climate dictates rain, rain, and more rain. But any time we’ve gone, the weather turns nice as soon as we get there.
We even went to Tofino in the middle of December: prime storm-watching time. But not for us. It was raining a bit when we got there in the late afternoon. The next morning the sun came out, wispy clouds floated across a blue, blue sky, and the rufous hummingbirds came out to dance a ballet on the sunbeams. It was Disney as far as the eye could see.
“Storm-watching” at Tofino.
And speaking of Disney, yesterday I discovered the true culprit behind our dump of snow. Apparently the morning of the big snowfall, one of my employees’ little granddaughters stared out at the white-coated world before turning wide eyes up to her mother.
“Mommy!” she exclaimed, “My frost magic must have leaked out while I was sleeping!”
So now I know who’s to blame, but she’s so darn cute I’d feel like an ogre if I did. And that’s snow fun.
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P.S. If you want to connect on Facebook, the link is over in the right-hand column of the page. I promise I don’t usually whine… but you’ll be subjected to whatever silliness falls out of my head. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.
Baby, Duck!
This weekend I was treated to a blast from the past. We invited friends over for dinner, and one couple arrived bearing a bottle of Baby Duck.
For those unfamiliar with Baby Duck, it’s a ‘wine’ that was introduced to Canada in the early 1970s: fizzy grape juice with lots of sugar, some alcohol, and a generous dollop of successful marketing. Oenophiles may recoil in horror, but the truth is Baby Duck was part of the formative drinking years of an entire generation.
The friend who brought it this weekend confessed that she drank Baby Duck for the first/last time at a party long ago where she singlehandedly polished off one and a half bottles… and has never drunk it again.
So many people had their first disastrous drinking experience with Baby Duck that the name became a bit of a joke. As the victims fled for the bathroom, stomachs heaving, a sardonic cheer would go up from the rest of the revelers as they scattered to provide a clear path: “Baby, duck!”
My very first drinking experience was as a young teenager, maybe fourteen or fifteen. One day our family departed the sticks and went to the Big City for a family visit, and my city cousin took me out for Chinese food.
Imagine the importance of this event in the life of a backward young hick! I’d never had Chinese food. And my almost-grown-up cousin (she had a driver’s license and a car…!) was taking me out, just the two of us, like adults. And when we got to the restaurant, she casually ordered us each a Singapore Sling! (Even though we were both too young to drink I guess we looked close enough – we didn’t get asked for ID. Times were simpler then.)
My parents had both come from non-drinking households, but they figured the safest way to protect their kids from dangerous rebellion was to introduce the concept of responsible drinking. So they had already explained the concepts of alcohol and intoxication, and every now and then they drank a glass of wine with dinner while we were growing up. They didn’t make a big deal of it, but we understood that alcohol was an adult thing.
So I was wildly excited by the grown-up meal… and I was afraid I’d get drunk and embarrass myself. I still recall how yummy the almond chicken was, and I still recall wondering if I was drunk yet because I didn’t feel any different after one cocktail that was probably mostly fruit juice.
Needless to say when I went off to university a few years later I discovered that you’re not actually drunk until you’ve consumed seven Zombies (three kinds of rum, apricot brandy, and fruit juice) a couple of Brown Cows (Kahlua and cream) and then topped it off with a couple of warm beers that nobody else dared to drink. (Gee, I wonder why…?)
I’ve been blessed with a cast-iron stomach and a lightning-fast metabolism, so that night I staggered home laughing all the way and fell into the dreamless slumber of the just and the intoxicated. My drinking buddy at the time wasn’t so lucky – she spent the entire night talking to Ralph on the great white telephone and silently cursing my oblivious snores.
I think she’s forgiven me after more than three decades, but she’ll never forget.
Anybody else remember their first drinking experience? Or prefer to forget it?
Brain Salad
(I promise this isn’t another post about zombies, despite the title.)
So… occasionally I make Tilt Soup. It never tastes the same twice, and the recipe is as follows: ‘Tilt the fridge and whatever falls out goes into the soup’. Much to Hubby’s relief, I exercise restraint with that recipe. I’ve never actually served soup containing pickles, jam, and leftover pizza… but the potential is there.
In the same vein, there’s a mental condition called ‘word salad’, where people are capable of intelligible speech but their words come out in an incoherent jumble. As you may have guessed by now, today’s post is brain salad – a conglomeration of oddments that have been collecting in my mental filters for some time now.
For example: One night I had an extremely vivid dream in which I was running an online dating service for lonely single monkeys. I have no idea what the hell I’d eaten or drunk that would generate that level of weirdness, but the dream begs all kinds of questions such as, “How would that even work?” and “For the love of God, WHY?”
And while I’m on the topic of ‘why’, here’s something else I wonder about: Why are ‘panties’ plural, but ‘bra’ is singular?
And why did I smell gunpowder in the upscale restaurant where I ate a while ago? I mean, really, the meat was fresh, but it wasn’t that fresh.
And why does my list of blog post ideas contain a draft post titled ‘I Got Mad Skillz’ that is completely blank? Apparently I once had an idea for a blog post I thought merited that title… but I guess my ‘skillz’ deserted me before I could write it.
The miscellany in my blog file also includes a biker obituary I discovered a while ago and saved because I’d like an obituary like this (except for the ‘younger women’ part):
“Weary of reading obituaries noting someone’s courageous battle with death, Mike wanted it known that he died as a result of being stubborn, refusing to follow doctors’ orders and raising hell for more than six decades. He enjoyed booze, guns, cars and younger women until the day he died. He is survived by Uncle Don and Aunt Cynthia (his favorite); Uncle Dill and Aunt Dot, cousins and nephews, Baba Yaga can kiss his butt.”
I presume Baba Yaga doesn’t refer to the witch of Slavic folklore, so I’d love to know the story behind that one.
And one last thing that made me laugh this week: You know those website captcha things where you have to interpret numbers and letters that rival Rorschach ink blots in their obscurity? Well, sometimes they’re not obscure enough to defeat my juvenile sense of humour. A while ago, I got ‘pness’ and ‘pemile’ in quick succession, generating a flurry of childish snickers. I entered 8==> in the text box, but apparently that wasn’t what they were looking for…
(Hint: Rotate that group of characters 90 degrees counterclockwise. Or clockwise if the Viagra has worn off.)
So that’s it for my brain salad today. Just like Tilt Soup, if you hold your nose and gulp it down fast, it might not come back on you…
Beef Is A Vegetable
Yes, it’s true. Beef is a vegetable, and today I’m going to give you a logical explanation as to why that’s so.
And as a special bonus, I’m going to address the age-old question posed by unhappy students ever since Plato and Aristotle started flapping their gums all those centuries ago: “When will I ever use these grand principles of logic in real life?”
The answer is ‘frequently’… if you have a devious mind and a burning desire to justify unhealthy nutritional choices.
Hubby and I have both.
Frankly, I was a lot happier when I thought the four basic food groups were sugar, salt, fat, and booze. But then I went and educated myself about proper nutrition, not realizing how that knowledge would cut into my enjoyment of the all the tastiest treats in life.
On my more cynical days, I figure cutting out all the best yummies won’t actually make me live longer; it’ll just seem like it. But since my main ambition is to not die of my own stupidity, I generally make an effort to eat well. And on the days when I don’t feel like doing that, I use logic to justify my poor food choices.
‘Cause, like, y’know, logic is like, all sophisticated and stuff, so that makes me feel smarter when I’m ingesting enough saturated fat to bung my arteries solid.
I’ve already discovered a few useful pre-rationalized vices. I’m sure just about everybody has seen the one about how chocolate comes from a bean, and beans are vegetables. And vegetables are healthy and an essential part of good nutrition, therefore it’s necessary to eat chocolate.
Or the one about how grapes are fruit, and wine is made from crushed grapes, therefore wine is just as healthy as fruit juice.
And barley sandwiches are a super-nutritious meal, too. (For those unfamiliar with barley sandwiches, the main ingredients in beer are barley and yeast, which are essentially the same ingredients as bread…)
If you think that’s a weak argument, never mind – I have a better one. Beer fights cancer, so it’s actually medicinal. And I just re-read that article and discovered that they consider a ‘healthy’ intake of beer to be up to two or three units a day for women. Dammit, I’ve been under-medicated! Bring on the beer!
But the people who thought up those rationalizations are rank amateurs compared to my husband. He has actually formulated a logic chain to justify eating gigantic quantities of steak:
Beef is a vegetable. And vegetables are healthy.
I did point out the food pyramid to him, indicating where there was a clear differentiation between meats and vegetables, but he just shook his head with the patient tolerance of a Zen scholar and proceeded to enlighten me.
“It’s simple,” he explained. “Cows eat grass. Grass is a vegetable. You are what you eat, so beef is a vegetable.”
I couldn’t argue with that even if I wanted to.
Is that the sweet, sweet smell of barbeque?
Author Diane Henders 