Phrase of the Month: "Snow fighting"

From the website for the Seattle Department of Transportation:

Seattle is not Snoqualmie Pass! In Seattle, we may use the same trucks for paving streets one day and for winter weather response the next. An investment in equipment that is exclusively dedicated to snow fighting would not be a good value for the taxpayers year to year.

Steep topography, like the Queen Anne Counterbalance, First Hill and the intersection of 35th Avenue SW and Avalon, add to the complexity of snow fighting in Seattle.

We may not have the money or the resources to fight you, Cursèd Snow...

...I don't know what comes after that. I wanted to say something threatening, but I don't have the resources.

I guess the snow wins after all. Resistance is futile.

WARNING: The following image contains graphic scenes of snow fighting. May not be suitable for all ages.

OH MY GOD!! Not the horses, too! Poor, poor snow-fighting horses!

J.C.: Because I LOVE HIM!!

Cromwell...James Cromwell

The Artist: The Review (The Bulleted Remix)

In 6th-grade, I spent the majority of my free time engaged in the following activities:

• Pretending to be Huck Finn and “fishing” in a nearby canal  (this involved accidental cross-dressing)
• Rollerblading a very methodical, complicated and neurotic circuit around the exterior of our house (this involved repeatedly opening and latching at least two gates with every revolution, all whilst trying to avoid the cat that would dart out in front of me in what can only be described as very sentient and purposeful efforts to make me splatter myself on the concrete)
• Watching American Movie Classics, the best cable channel of all time (before it started having commercials)

I guess I was kind of a weird 11-year old.   But I loved my black-and-whites more than anything. My favorites were:

• Anything with Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire
• Anything with Katherine Hepburn
• Dear Ruth, and its sequel, Dear Wife
• And my #1 fave at the time: The Abbott and Costello comedy The Time of Their Lives

It’s taken a long time, but I’ve learned to appreciate and, even respect, color movies. I still think they’re kind of flashy and there’s far too much ankle showing in my opinion. I did not agree with the scandalous premise of Pleasantville. Life is meant to be spent sleeping in one’s own twin bed.

Does this have anything to do with The Artist? Not really, I just like to talk about myself.

Fine. I’ll talk about The Artist…

R.I.P Mike's Coffee Maker, 2007-2012

November 21, 2012, 6:10 A.M.

The glorious aroma of Peet's Coffee was in the air. As I poured the ground coffee in the coffee maker, it felt like one of those days which requires an extra scoop or two, so I prepared an extra strong pot. I walked away without giving it much more thought.

A few moments later, I realized something was amiss. Where was the smell of freshly brewed java? Where was the soft rumbling of the coffee maker that had consistently permeated the sweet silence of so many winter morns in the past?

I walked into the kitchen. I must have forgotten to turn on the coffee machine, or so I thought. I approached the coffee maker, confident the situation would be easily rectified. Confusion set in quickly however, as I saw the faint orange glow of the "on" button of the coffee machine, but this time with an empty coffee pot sitting above it. Was this really happening, or was this someone's idea of a sick, sick joke? Was I being punk'd? Was Ashton Kutcher going to pop up from behind the couch? I yelled "Ashton? ASHTON??"....nothing but silence.

I'd always wondered what my reaction would be in a time of crisis such as this. Panic? A muffled scream? A breakout of hives? Thankfully, I stayed calm. Being the handyman that I am, I turned it off, then on again. After that was determined to be unsuccessful, I turned it off again, then on again. Fearing death by electrocution, I decided not to attempt any further maintenance. The coffee maker was too far gone anyway, there would be no resuscitation.

What became of the ground coffee that was tragically never brewed you ask? It was left in the coffee maker, allowed to say its goodbyes for a full day before ultimately being united with a new machine. An awkward situation to be sure, but one I think the coffee will stand up and face with great courage and resolve.

As for me? I just stopped by Starbucks on my way to work.

The Artist: The Review

The font is exquisite.

Dateline: Hold Shelf at Southwest Branch of Seattle Public Library

It...

...has arrived.

Guest Contributor: R------s

One of our many loyal fans wanted to let us know that he's having a bad day. He writes, "Just finished a 15-minute conversation about obscene photos. There are some strange folks on the interwebs. Boredom is setting in."

Sorry, R------s, I'm afraid this isn't an advice blog. But if I were going to weigh in on the matter, I would recommend watching an episode of Picture Pages with Bill Cosby and eating a large hamburger topped with peanut butter.

Poem of the Day: Warning! Contains graphic nerdery.

Exchange of Letters
Wendy Cope

‘Man who is a serious novel would like to hear from a woman who is a poem’ (classified advertisement, New York Review of Books)

Dear Serious Novel,

I am a terse assured lyric with impeccable rhythmic flow, some apt and original metaphors, and a music that is all my own. Some people say I am beautiful.

My vital statistics are eighteen lines, divided into three-line stanzas, with an average of four words per line.

My first husband was a cheap romance; the second was Wisden’s Cricketers’ Almanac. Most of the men I meet nowadays are autobiographies, but a substantial minority are books about photography or trains.

I have always hoped for a relationship with an upmarket work of fiction. Please write and tell me more about yourself.

Yours intensely,
Song of the First Snowdrop

Dear Song of the First Snowdrop,

Many thanks for your letter. You sound like just the kind of poem I am hoping to find. I’ve always preferred short, lyrical women to the kind who go on for page after page.

I am an important 150,000 word comment on the dreams and dilemmas of twentieth-century Man. It took six years to attain my present weight and stature but all the twenty-seven publishers I have so far approached have failed to understand me. I have my share of sex and violence and a very good joke in chapter nine, but to no avail. I am sustained by the belief that I am ahead of my time.

Let’s meet as soon as possible. I am longing for you to read me from cover to cover and get to know my every word.

Yours impatiently,
Death of the Zeitgeist



Thanks So Much!

I don't like the phrase, "thanks so much," in fact I despise it.  It's not terribly offensive in itself, but it's the excessive usage that gets me. Is it really that vital to include the "so much?" C'mon now, I just e-mailed you a copy of your invoice, I didn't donate one of my kidneys. A simple, "thanks," will work just fine, so long as I haven't gone to great lengths to help you with something completely out of the ordinary.

While the phrase is intended to make one seem warm and appreciative, it actually comes off as somewhat cold and thoughtless. Here's what I picture when I hear this godforsaken phrase: a surly 50-something office clerk named Pam, wearing purple lipstick (because that's her favorite color!), impersonally uttering "thanks so much" without so much as looking at you, just because you brought her a facsimile from the front desk.

Am I the only one that feels this way? I am? Did I mention it's my birthday?

Jeez! Everybody's gotta make a big deal about their birthday!

What's that all about? It's only like the anniversary of the day you were born. It's not like it was the day the sandwich was invented or anything.

Anyway, to celebrate, here's the classic Jack Black Birthday song from Saturday Night Live...



Other Famous 11/13 Birthdays

I've never bothered to find out who shares my birthday. I'll cop to being pretty excited about these:

Saint Augustine of Hippo- My parents were very close to naming me this.

Whoopi Goldberg- I'm separated by only two degrees from the movie Ghost.

Metta Worldpeace- Similar temperaments.

Jimmy Kimmel- Yes!

Joe Mantegna- Yes!

Asashio Taro III, Japanese Sumo Wrestler- My birthday brother and body double.

Charles Simon Favart, French Dramatist- Some also refer to me as a French dramatist.

L.L. Bean- I got something in the mail from him today.  A birthday card I'm assuming.

Video Clip of The Day

Since it's my birthday today, It's required by law that I link a Mr. Show skit. Due to my advanced age of somewhere in the neighborhood of two score, I may be too lazy to post anything other than this today. 

Fashion is a Passion

Via 

Just reblogging stuff here because I am LAZY!!

(So this is what it looks like to be part of the problem. Meh.)

My Favorite Tweet From Election Night

Julius Sharpe ‏@juliussharpe

This is the latest Mitt Romney has ever been awake.

Apples Aren't Oranges, and Government Is Not A Business!

And now for a brief interlude from the normal wit and high-minded comedy of this site. I need to get this off my chest, and this is the last day to do it.

I received an e-mail a couple of weeks back in which I was informed with a painstaking lack of detail that our choice is crystal clear this election year:  Mitt Romney ran a profitable business, and therefore is far more qualified to run this country. Yes, this was an isolated chain e-mail, but I hear this sort of thinking quite often.

While I didn't respond to the email, it continued to irritate me for days. The government of the United States is not a business! This idea that someone fortunate enough to have made money in the private sector can somehow sprinkle his magic fairy dust on the other 300 million of us so that we’re all financially stable, and suddenly streamline the entire government is simpleton thinking at best.

Fire departments are not going to turn a profit. Neither are police departments, or Medicare, or FEMA, or countless other government programs. I can guarantee you though that when your house is on fire, the least of your concerns will be whether or not the fire department is negatively impacting the bottom line.

Even if Romney could run the government as a business, what sort of businessman would take increasing revenue off the table? Governing while refusing to raise taxes under any circumstances would be akin to a struggling business refusing to raise prices despite the fact its customers really have no other options. If you had a business which had an excess of widget makers, (hundreds more than your fiercest competitor) and these were your biggest drain on costs, would you consider cutting back a bit on widget makers, or would you concern yourself with cutting back on the Friday donuts budget? I’d liken this to Romney’s refusal to cut defense spending while finger-wagging at insignificant budgetary concerns such as PBS.

I understand that people have their own reasons for voting for either candidate. I beg of you though, please don’t use the argument that was made in the aforementioned e-mail. The function of government is basically to protect and serve its citizens. The function of a business is to turn a profit. I guess you could call that simpleton thinking as well, but at least it’s based in reality.

Happy election day!

Anxiety of the Day

"Too often we enjoy the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought."

- John Fitzgerald Kennedy

"I got this."

Hey, remember that time I looked at the election stats and Mittens had, like, 30 more electoral votes than you?

Not funny, Obama.

Not funny.

The Daily Kōan

Fun With Words With Friends

Blatantly stealing the idea of our head writer, I present a (very) short story using every word from a partially completed Words With Friends game. An autographed head shot of me (actual value $0.72) to anyone who can correctly find the 13 words from said game.

Chapter 1: The Beginning of the End

From the darkness that filled the night sky, the gay jaguar could only glean that the moons that surrounded her beautiful planet had been rezoned. Knowing this would affect the qi’s of not only the gay jaguar, but the entire animal kingdom of planet Mitty, she cried a seemingly endless stream of gay jaguar tears. She could feel in her ovary that her time to reproduce was near, and with this unfortunate rezoning of the moons, there was a very real chance that time would never come.

All of Mitty was understandably concerned at the recent developments. In the distance, she heard a steady stream of coarse language unbecoming of the jaguar.  Reading through her hand-me-down zine of secret battle techniques of the gay jaguar, a particular passage caught her tear-filled eye. “Thou shalt dole out fierce and unrelenting punishment with thy sword, to any jaguar, gay or straight, who cusses.” Wiping away her tears with a gentle swipe of her paw, she drew her sword.

To be continued, natch……

Presenting An Anonymous Cat...

...and his interpretative dance performance of what Sundays are like...

Via

Words of the Week

Well, this is just blatant hyperpromotion of Anu Garg and his nefarious team of lexicological geniuses responsible for the dee-lyt-full A.Word.A.Day email I receive every weekday in my inbox. Garg et al. are so cool in fact that they don't even need a great looking website. It's like they're stuck in 1997, but I don't care. Nobody seems to really.

Every week has a special theme and, since there's been a 98% political humidity index lately, last week's theme was:

Words that appear to have been coined after the 2012 US presidential candidates:

• obambulate
• bidentate
• mitty
• pauldron
• barrack

And now, storytime! 

 

Percival and the Primrose Path

 

Though he wasn't on the team, Percival had worn his pauldrons to the football game, with the Mitty fantasy that a series of bizarre and injurious accidents might incapacitate the four quarterbacks who were on the team. In this event, the coach would magically notice that Percival was a football prodigy and call upon him to throw the game-winning touchdown. In the third quarter, he began to obambulate over to the player's bench, when suddenly he was elbowed in the mouth by a barracking fan. Sadly, Percival had failed to wear his helmet, and the incident left him with a bidentate lisp for the rest of his life. Eventually, he changed hith official name to Perthival. Then, he moved to Authtralia.

A.Word.A.Day : The magic and music of words.

Quote of the Day: Deb

I Could Wrap You in Some Foam Or Something Billowy?