Thursday, January 31, 2008
Spatters and Drips: Memopad Leftovers and Mental Logjams
It seems I need to enliven the old Chucklehut with a handful of drolleries for the ADHD set - I mean, welcome, readers from OINY! Yes, I’m the sicko who came up with the winning headline for their bi-weekly contest, which is as close as I’ve come yet to that goddamn National Merit scholarship (I’m looking at you, Princeton). So I’m giddy with, um, gid, and stuff, and I’ve got crapreams of reamcrap coming my way today, plus weird anxiety and excitement (non-free-floating varieties), so let me take this opportunity to dump a few items of notebook-dross and to clear my mental dex as to issues that are producing particularly high levels of agitation.
Noted while shopping at Walgreens:
* Most misleading name for cheap, shoddy, tissue-thin men’s dress socks: “Looking Good Mister” brand hosiery.
* Least misleading name for cheap, probably shoddy, men’s athletic socks: “Bag o’ Socks” brand hosiery.
Noted while driving from Seattle into California on the 5:
* A farming-equipment outlet with two stacked signs erected by the side of the highway, ostensibly advertising the products sold therein: (top sign) “Cummings,” (bottom sign) “Onan.” In that farmers are in the business of spilling seeds upon the ground this might actually make sense.
* A mattress store called “Mattress Country,” with its offshoot outlet, “Mattress Country and More.” I’m wondering, once the whole country has gone mattress, what do they think is left? I would recommend that future expansions be called “Mattress Territory” and “The Mattress Protectorates.” After that we get into Mattress colonialization and that’s always just a quagmattress.
Noted while driving out to the 5 from SF on Highway 37 in south Carneros: The Randy Bolt Memorial Highway, and the Richard “Fresh Air” Jansen Memorial Bridge. With all due respect to the deceased, what do you have to do to get such cool nicknames? Nobody ever calls me by any of my preferred cool nicknames. But “Randy Bolt?” Sounds like a combination wrestler-porn star! Dang that’s a good name to put on a sign....
Cool nickname applied to my dad during his festschrift luncheon (which was a big important deal so get with the program): “The Anti-Quasi-Obscurantist.” I think he ought to have it tattooed to his forehead, but that might interfere with the whole “talmud professor” gig.
Items on which I misread a final exclamation point for the letter “l,” indicating to me that I need to update my ocular rx:
* Christmas Salel
* A Potty for Mel
My current mental kidneystone: how did an indolent and under-exercised lout like myself wind up with “Jumper’s Knee?” Which jumper, and off of what? Is this BASE jumper knee, or just toddler-overalls jumper knee? I really hope it’s not bail jumper knee, anyway. If I were in Mexico, would I say I had “humper knee?” And of course, how the hell did I get it? It must be from jumping too rarely because high-frequency jumping is not, as they say, my thing. And how did I avoid getting “lounger’s ass” or “nap-eye,” anyway?
My current eagerly-anticipated thrill: I’m agonna Didnylan! Yes, my dear step-nephew is celebrating his manhood with a bar mitzvah ceremony on Saturday, which means Kel and Z and I are going to jet down to Los Angeles’ south bay region for the weekend. Saturday is the bar day, with services and a kid’s skating party (I assume there will be a bar at one of these events, anyway). Sunday is the mitzvah day, and dad is taking us and also my sister and her little family all out to the Happiest Place in Anaheim (assuming the Ducks and Angels are having bad seasons) (and not counting that breakfast smorgasboard with the amazing apple fritters). Zach is thrilled to meet “Pickymouse,” as he says it. I don’t think he knows what he’s in for - the sight of a five-foot plastic rodent in pants is unnerving to even the most seasoned travelers. Wish me luck. Wish! Wish harder, damn you!
Let’s wrap up with a list of qualifiers that I will insist apply to all my purchases and activities during 2008:
* Carbon-neutral
* Dolphin-safe
* Anti-bacterial
* Indigenous enterprise
* Rehabilitated
* Metro-sentient
* Pro-democracy
* Drought resistant
* Artesinal
* Neo-trad alternative
* Fully armored
* Re-legalized
* Disambiguated
* Ozone-replenishing
* Ritually slaughtered
So, anything that qualifies for all that, I can buy or do. Disneyland will consist of 8 hours sheltered under a cloth umbrella trying not to exhale. See why I need all that luck?
Okay, g’wan with you now. Don’t you need to milk a goat or something? I know I do!
