Archive for May, 2008

• Sufficiently Annoyed
• Digital Photography School
• skforlee – easy pb&j
  ar with two lids that allows you to access all of your peanut butter easily without having to resort to breaking open the jar.
• PingMag – The Tokyo-based magazine about “Design and Making Things” » Archive » Funny Shaped Japanese Watermelons
  ell you the farmers first make a frame and put a small watermelon in it, just like pouring metal in a mold. The watermelon fills the given shape as it grows. There is a much more complex and secret meth
• » Animals | The Funny Web
• DollarTimes | Balance Your Budget
• Pet Heroes: Heart wrenching stories
• MySpaceTV Videos: Cary Brothers w/ Wm Fitzsimmons – Blue Eyes by (Carrie)
• MySpaceTV Videos: cary brothers – the last one – stubbs bbq by jess
• Eightface // flickrRSS for WordPress

• Dog Logic
• Women for Women International – Helping Women Survivors of War

My mother is relentless. She got the box set of Where The Red Fern Grows, and Where The Red Fern Grows II. EVERYONE knows that it’s one of the saddest movies EVER. Ok, well if you’re close in age to me, you know this. I remember vividly how broken hearted I was by this movie, as well as Old Yeller.

Yet for some asinine reason, I allowed her to persuade N and I into watching Where The Red Fern Grows. N adamantly refused, he must have sensed the looming sadness and his fight or flight response kicked in. I mean, he did everything right down to ask my grandma if he could come to her house while we watched “that stupid fern grows movie that Gran is FORCING me to watch and I don’t want to”…

When I tell you the child didn’t want to watch the movie, I’m telling you he all but threw a hissy fit. However, yet again, for some absolutely stunning and unknown reason, I joined her in the persuading of him to watch the movie. Finally, she just put the movie on. Eventually, he took notice and got still enough to watch it.

Naturally, right around the time I notice he’s watching the movie and starting to smile (to himself, if he knew anyone was looking it would be the sourpuss face of course) I realize what I’ve done… I have just set my one and only dear son up for heart break. Who does that? What kind of mother am I? I knew when the persuasion started how it would leave him feeling, yet I did it anyway! Is it some sick right of passage as a mother?

We all know what’s coming. The damn dogs die. My kid cries. I cry. That sucked!

Then dear sweet “Gran” tries to persuade us to watch part 2!! I had enough, and so did N. We just couldn’t take anymore, so we didn’t watch. We can only handle getting attached to and losing so many dogs per day…

N says, of the movie… “Gran FORCED me to watch that movie, the red fern grows and it was sad and it DRAMATIZED me!”

Dramatized is right. It was a lot of drama, on screen and off.

As I sat in the drive thru this morning waiting on my a.m. caffiene fix, I stared unconcerned out of the window waiting for something worthwhile to come on Kidd Craddock in the Morning (they always crack me up). I was going over things to do today in my mind, when something caught my attention – what did they say? It’s a commercial, but they have paused long enough, and said something crazy enough to pull me away from myself to see what in the world was coming out of my radio…

Then they say it again…. “we love bugs!” … Now, they had my interest. What was this about? I must havemissed an important part of the commercial, because it left me with that empty feeling. All I knew was there seemed to be some people that love bugs, and they also mentioned (and I quote) “roaches and termites get a bad rap!”…

photo credit: CharlesLam

At this point I realized something. I knew then I was going to go home and look up “we love bugs”. I also knew, in that split second, that they were doing something right. At the risk of sounding like a complete horses ass, these “we love bugs” people just succeeded in marketing themselves to me, the listener. They said “we love bugs” enough times (more than I have done here, trust me) that there was no possible way that I could forget it, and when they said roaches and termites got a bad rap, well I nearly snorted the laugh came out so quickly and unexpectedly. They did it! I don’t know why they love bugs, nor do I really care, but they got my attention, and by God, I was going to Google them when I got home.

And I did.

First I tried welovebugs.com and that didn’t work, it took me to an auto collision body repair shop website. So, I googled “we love bugs” and came across welovebugs.org – only then did I realize it was an advertisement for the New Orleans Audubon Zoo’s opening of the Audubon Insectarium in approximately 25 days. That’s kind of neat, I already learned something today – because I had no idea there even was such a thing as an “insectarium” (much less, a word for it!).

So, if you feel like you’re going to look like a fool for clicking that link to check out the upcoming Insectarium first, make sure nobody is looking. Second, imagine being me and realizing not only did I fall head over feet for a “we love bugs” commercial, but I sat here and blogged about it.

photo credit: Laurent Jégou

One night a friend and me, we’ll call her B, went to hear our favorite local band play. We drank a good bit, had a lot of fun, and decided we needed food on the way home. I know that drinking alcohol, no matter how much or how little, always impairs judgement, because I knew then just like I know now that choosing to go to Taco Bell is NEVER a wise decision.

Impaired judgement aside, we rolled into the drive thru at Taco Bell. We sat there, laughing, cutting up, trying ot pay attention to the menu but I was mostly waiting for the stranger in the speaker to ask me for my order so that I could tell the stranger “Hold on a sec!” – because that’s what I do. I don’t pay attention until I’m forced to.

A few minutes of laughing at how stupid we are, and probably how stupid a few other people were that night, a voice comes over the speaker. It’s the long awaited stranger! Yippee! Now I can tell them to hold on so I can see what I want to order.. .right? WRONG!!

The strange speaker person, who happened to be female, threw me a curveball that nearly caused me to wet my pants.

First let me say, that in all of my *ahem* years of life, every time that I have ever pulled up to a drive thru to place an order, there has been some sort of “welcome to..” greeting, but it always, always ends with some version of “can I take your order?”

Not tonight!

She, the stranger in speaker at Taco Bell (which might very well be located in the Twilight Zone) says, and I quote: “Welcome to Taco Bell! How are you doing tonight?”

Silence.

WHAT?!! Seriously? I looked from the speaker, back to B who is impatiently waiting in the passenger seat for me to say something. Anything. But all I could think to say was “Am I really supposed to answer that?” (which I said to B).

Needless to say, B busted out laughing, I busted out laughing, and literally had to roll up my window for a few seconds because I didn’t want strange girl in the speaker to hear me laughing my ass off. B is telling me to answer her, and I’m flat refusing! I do NOT want to have a conversation with a SPEAKER!!

Finally I regained enough composure to roll the window down so B could order her food, and I just ordered nachos bell grande (which I paid dearly for later).

Why was that so funnY? Was it because we were drunk? I really don’t think so. I have asked around, and so far everyone agrees with me that everytime they have pulled into a drive thru they have been asked for their order.

Should I have responded with “I’m drunk and hungry, stupid! Why else would I be here?!” – Probably. I probably already had something unfathomable happen to my food, so it’s not like it would have hurt anything, however my reaction time was also impaired and as my grandma used to say, my giggle box was flipped over.

Thanks, strange girl in the speaker at Taco Bell. Thanks for a good laugh, and a good story.

I’m back, and I’m here to stay. I have a lot of things to say, some funny, some serious, and some off the wall shit that you can love or hate, I don’t care. I’m not writing to please anyone, or holding back to keep from offending anyone – I’m here to be me and speak my mind. If you don’t like it, don’t read it! But you don’t know what you’ll be missing, hahahaha….

No really, I’m not trying to sound catty. I’m just tired of laying in bed at night with all of these thoughts running through my mind. Sometimes they are so funny that I make myself laugh, sometimes they are so random yet so poignant that I’m astounded that this is going on inside MY head.

I need an outlet, and this is it. Be it what it is!! I’ve already got some good stories lined up, and mostly written in my mind, i just have to find time to sit here and tap them all out… lol

Looking forward to this!!

later,

H.