Veronica Brush's Blog, page 6

Poo of the Future

Big news! But first, let’s talk about my dog’s poo.

I took my dog for a walk yesterday and it was the most exciting moment of her entire life. (We go for a walk every day, which means she has the most exciting moment of her entire life 7 days a week. I think I need to be more like her in this. Maybe if I let myself get more excited about everyday things, I would enjoy things more. “They’re showing Star Trek: The Next Generation reruns on TV?!?! Best day ever!!!”)

Anyway, not too far into our walk, my puppy discovered she needed to poo. This was not a problem as I am always armed with a roll of poo-bags. (They do not glow-in-the-dark, but they are purple, so that makes me happy.)

I bent over to pick it up and that’s when I saw it:

Wait…I have to go back and tell you something else first.

They’re doing a lot of construction in our neighborhood right now. So the streets, sidewalks, and some people’s lawns are all spray painted with various mysterious symbols.

On our walk the previous day, I had noticed this:

(It’s not a very clear picture because that is what happens when you try to take a picture with your hand that is also holding a leash with a very excited dog on the other other end of it.  That’s why I have this picture of baby ducks we once saw on our walk:

Unfortunately the baby ducks didn’t make it into the picture when someone in our walking party decided it wasn’t as much fun to take a picture of the baby ducks as it would be to try and chase the baby ducks.  But now I can’t help but think of baby ducks when I see blurry grass.  So I have kept the picture.)

Anyway, the initials on the street inspired me to write this letter:

Dear Street Construction Workers,

How are you? I am fine.

I know that you have long admired me, but I must insist that you stop spray painting my initials on the city streets. It is flattering, but seems unprofessional.

Sincerely, Veronica Maleficent Brush

And now, back to the poo.

I bent over to pick it up and that’s when I saw it:

The construction workers had spray painted a big ‘X’ on the edge of the yard we had stopped at and my dog had pooed smack dab in the center of it.

I know it’s hard to believe, so I was going to take a picture of it as proof. But then two thoughts popped into my head:

This is really gross.

My neighbors already think I’m weird.

So I decided against a picture, even though I know you will doubt the absolute squareness of my dog’s poo on the ‘X’. Instead, I present you with this more pleasant picture that expresses the same concept:

The dresser represents the ‘X’ and the flowers sitting in the almost-perfect-center of the dresser represent poo.

So I’m staring at the poo (and my neighbors are staring at me staring at the poo and probably wondering if they turn on the sprinklers, would that make me leave) and I’m wondering “How is that possible?”

I mean, my dog is wonderful and all, but her repertoire of tricks does not include expert marksmanship. It’s like that old saying, “You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make him poo dead-center of a pre-determined spot”.

So I know my dog did not do that on purpose.

Which leads me to the only logical conclusion that can be drawn from such circumstances:

One of the construction workers working in my neighborhood is from the future and has come back in time to tell me something important. He’s spray-painting my initials on the street to get my attention and marking the places my dog is going to poo as proof that he’s really from the future.

I have no idea what message this time-traveler wants to give me me, but I can only assume it’s something along the lines that I’m the only hope future-humanity has. That seems to be one of the only two reasons people ever travel back in time.  And this is the wrong time and place to try and stop Hitler from being born.  So I’m pretty sure it’s the whole save-humanity thing.

The weight of the future world is on my shoulders. We all knew that day would come eventually. What with Princess Di being gone and Mr. T getting on in years, I’m the most logical choice to rescue humanity.

Which brings up the obvious question: how early do you have to get up in order to rescue humanity? Because that could be a problem.

I Bid You Peas

Cooking blogs seems to very in right now and I’m still on my cooking kick (because there is absolutely no proof that my friend’s husband got sick from my experimental chicken sushi).

So I’ve decided this is a cooking blog now.

“But I thought this was a lifestyle blog,” you say, if you happen to have read that post.

The lifestyle thing just wasn’t working out for me. I think I have too many toes and I don’t like chihuahuas.

So if anybody asks, this is your favorite cooking blog. And just tell them all those posts about my puppy are about how to cook dog meat.

For my first, er, next post about how to cook I’d like to answer some reader questions as read to me by the voices in my head.

“Dear Veronica, How are you? I am fine. Why does cooking take so freaking long? Sincerely, Steve”

Well that’s a pretty stupid question, Steve, but I’ll answer it anyway.

Cooking takes so long because most of it is busy work. Recipe writers don’t want people to think cooking is easy or they won’t need recipes anymore. So people come up with useless activities to make cooking seem more complex and time-consuming than it is.

For example, waiting for butter to get soft. A lot of baking recipes recommend you set a stick of butter on the counter and wait for it to get soft. They hope you won’t remember that you own a microwave and can thus have soft butter in seconds. Even if the power should go out, I own matches and am not afraid to set butter on fire. There’s no reason I should have to wait for soft butter.

Many recipes instruct you to separate the egg yolk from the egg white. Then some recipes wait several steps and then tell you to mix the egg yolk and egg white back together, hoping that by then you’ll have forgotten how painstakingly you separated them in the first place!

Then there’s flour sifting. I am a firm believer that when I buy something from the store, it should have already been completely made. By the time the flour gets to my home, it should be a finished product with no assembly still required.

Are they so understaffed and overworked at the flour factory that they suddenly declared, “Forget it! We don’t have time to sift all this flour! Just bag it up as it is and the people who buy it can sift it for themselves!”?

I personally refuse to sift my own flour because it sets a very dangerous precedent. If we let flour makers get away with it, it will quickly spread to all food manufacturers. You’ll open a jar of peanut butter to find a handful of peanuts and a hammer.

And that won’t be nearly as upsetting as when you go to a burger joint and they present you with a cow and a hammer.

That will cause most people to go vegetarian. So then we’re all eating things like coleslaw, which will come in a bag with a cabbage and a machete. Pretty soon the population of the world will be largely finger-less.

It’s difficult to blog without at least a few fingers, so there’s an end to my profession and suddenly I’m stuck trying to find some other job that doesn’t actually pay me anything.

All because you gave in to the peer-pressure of sifting your own flour.

Why? Why would you do that to me? Do I come to your workplace and mess up your job with my cooking? No! Mostly because I don’t know where you work.

Some people say it’s important to sift flour in case any bugs were accidentally packed in your flour. Call me crazy, but I’ve always thought that part of what I was paying food manufacturers for when I buy their product is to keep bugs out of my food.

If I routinely found bugs in my flour, my first thought would not be “I need to come up with a way that I can add flour to my food while straining out all the bugs that appear to be living in that flour.” My first thought would be to Google attorneys so I can sue the flour company for mental anguish caused by finding bugs in my flour. Then I’d be a millionaire. I’d buy a few mansions and hire more servants than I needed.

Of course, then I’d have to come up with something to keep them all busy.

“Hey, you! Go separate some eggs. And when you’re done with that, go get yourself a lifestyle.”

Name That Singer

I like Disney music. I’m not ashamed. Particularly because for some reason, most of the people who have ever told me it’s embarrassing that an adult likes Disney songs are smoking cigarettes at the time. All I can think about as they’re mocking me is the great Disney medley I’m going to sing at their funeral. I think I’ll open with something tasteful, like “Cruella De Vil”.

I was feeding a friend’s cat while she was on vacation (the friend, not the cat. If the cat had gone on vacation, we could have skipped all this trouble). This cat has never really mastered eating, so you have to sit and watch it while it attempts to eat to make sure it doesn’t choke. Sitting around my friend’s apartment, I filled the time by hacking into my friend’s Pandora and listening to Disney music. Loudly.

Then I became concerned. What if one of her neighbors called the police?

Neighbor: Hello, police? The woman in the apartment next to me left for a vacation yesterday and now I’m hearing noises in her apartment. I think someone has broken in.  How soon can you get here? I can hear them listening to Disney songs very loudly. So would you mind using excessive force?

I started bringing headphones. The cat tried to eat them. My friend’s cat is kind of an idiot.

Most recently I’ve been listening to the soundtrack of Mulan. There’s a song in there sung by the male lead and I was listening to it on repeat, enjoying his voice and picturing the sexy Asian man who was probably singing it.

I should have just continued imagining. But I decided I wanted to know what he looked like. And if he were single. And if he ever took lonely bloggers out for gluten-free pizza.

First I found the picture of the man who did the speaking voice and he was a fairly good looking Asian man. But I had to look a little harder to find out what dreamboat did the singing.

Long story short: I spent a good half-hour of my life unknowingly thinking Donny Osmond was sexy and I may never recover.

How did Donny Osmond get cast in Mulan? Frozen, sure. But Mulan? I wanna know who pitched that idea.

Disney Director: Well, we’ve cast our male lead, but he can’t sing, so we still need someone to do the singing parts. Let’s brainstorm. It’s the story of Mulan…it takes place in China…

Disney Employee: Donny Osmond!

Director: Excuse me?

Employee: Donny Osmond. He’s a great singer.

Director: Did you even hear what we’re casting for?

Employee: Doesn’t matter. Donny Osmond can do it!

Director: Who are you?

Employee: Donny Osmond.

Director: You work here?

Employee: I must. I can’t figure out any other way I got cast as the singing voice in Mulan.

Or something like that.

The point is they should really put some sort of warning label on the CD so that unsuspecting young women like myself know not to let the pleasing vocals lull us into some sort of romantic daydream. Because I would NOT swoon into his arms if Donny Osmond showed up on my doorstep on a horse wearing no shirt (him or the horse).

Not that I’d care to admit anyway.

And that’s all I care to talk about Donny Osmond now.

Lessons

Once upon a time, there was a beautiful blogger who had an adorable puppy and some weird hobbies. One of those hobbies was learning to play an ancient Chinese musical instrument called the erhu. An erhu looks like this:

Or at least that’s what an erhu would look like if it had been made by a blind 3 year old. But maybe if you knew what an erhu looked like, you would be able to interpret the picture better. So that’s really your fault.

Why did this blogger decide to play the erhu? Because it’s weird and so is she, so it’s a match made in heaven. Also, it’s not as hard to feel you are excelling at something when most people don’t even know what it is:

“Oh, you don’t know what an erhu is? Well, I not only know what it is, I can play upwards of 3 different notes on it. Two of them won’t even make your ears bleed.”

Anyway, it was the 3rd anniversary of this particular blogger’s erhu lessons. Her teacher played a beautiful melody and she played it back to him, although you really wouldn’t know it was the same song because the erhu is really hard to play even after three years of lessons, okay?! Even harder than drawing one.

Um…anyway, the two of them were so happy that even the overcast sky couldn’t ruin their joy. But that’s when the melody was interrupted by a knock on the doorbell.

The blogger looked from the door to her teacher. In his eyes she could see that it was not an unexpected guest. He had known this moment was coming, even as they had laughed over memories of their shared 3 years of erhu. Why had he not told her? Why had he not prepared her? It was too late now to break the news gently, so he just spoke it boldly as he could.

“That,” he said to her, “Is my NEW STUDENT!”

Dun dun duuuuuuunnn!

She gasped. New student? How could he have taken on a new student? Wasn’t she frustrating enough for him? Weren’t her excuses about why she hadn’t practiced for the 156th week in a row creative enough?

Before the blogger could stop him, her teacher had opened the door.

In the imposter came, victory flashing in her eyes before the battle had even begun. The two students shook hands.

“Hello,” this new woman chided. Then she threatened, “It’s nice to meet you.”

Not willing to give an inch, the old student stood her ground and warned her, “It’s nice to meet you, too!”

There was so much running through the old student’s mind. She had never dreamed of having to share her teacher. Who knew her town was such a hot-bed for ancient Chinese instrument learning?

And what if this new student played better than her? What if she was a faster learner?!? WHAT IF SHE ACTUALLY PRACTICED?!?

If this new student did indeed practice every day like some kind of sick, twisted, good student, it would only be a matter of time before she caught up and even surpassed the old student (who, by the way is only 30 and so really not that old of a student). She could not let that happen. She would have to do whatever it took to stay ahead of the teacher-thiefter (Rhyming is fun), even if that meant playing her erhu more than just ten minutes on Saturday the night before her lesson.

And more than just Sunday morning 5 minutes before she had to go to her lesson.

Maybe even more than just one more time than that.

She was going to have to knuckle down.

She had no choice.

This was musical war.

Frist Drafts

Friends like to say to me, “Veronica, I loved that murder mystery on Mars you wrote, which I bought at THIS LINK.”

“Why are you talking like that?” I ask.

“Because SOMEBODY has to do some promotion for your book and you stink at it.”

“Fair enough.”

“Anyway,” they say. “I can’t wait to read the thrilling sequel. How’s that coming along?”

“Oh, alright I guess. HEY! LOOK OVER THERE!”

Then I have to chloroform them, run away, speed home, get my emergency “Someone asked about the book I’m working on” supply kit and my puppy, hop on a plane, fly somewhere new, change my name, dye my hair, dye my puppy’s hair, grow a beard, shave it off (realizing I look terrible in a beard), and start a new life among people who don’t know I’m writing a book.

Maybe that’s a bit of a knee-jerk reaction. But as a writer, it can be hard to talk about a work-in-progress, or as we authors lovingly call it, a WIP (that is a true fact).

That’s because first drafts stink. They are full of plot holes, characters change names and sometimes gender, and things just happen because you need them to, not because you have a good reason for them to.

Here is a literary interpretation of a dramatic reenactment of a typical scene of a first draft of a book:

“Quick! We have to find Bob before the murderer does!” Steve said as he embraced Anna.

Enjoying the feel of Steve’s warm…affectionate…ambidextrous embrace, Abigail replied, “Yes, but first, let’s go to the woods.”

“Why? Bob’s not in the woods.”

Amy pulled out of Steve’s arms and stared at him for what seemed like ages.

Yup, she just kept staring at him.

Staring and staring.

It was like the longest stare ever in the history of stairs. Stairs? Stehrs? Sderz? How did I lose the ability to spell that word halfway through a sentence?!?

Finally Amanda answered Steve’s question, whatever it had been. “We have to go to the woods because that’s where the next scene is. We’ll figure out why we go to the woods in the re-write.”

“Okay,” Steve said. “Wait, is the scene in the woods the one I die in?”

Alexi stared at him. Wait, she already did that. So, she did something totally different. She turned away from him, in fact, instead staring at…whatever was not in the general vicinity of Steve, like a tree and a vase and a cat and a baseball card and some asparagus.

Steve asked again, “Ava? Is that the scene I die in?”

Arabella answered. “N-o-o-o-o-o-oprobably not.”

Steve smiled. “Oh good. But how will we get to the woods from here?”

(Chapter Break)

Chapter (I don’t remember what number is supposed to go here)

Antoinette wept over Steve’s dead body in the woods

***

So first drafts are embarrassing and not fun to talk about. Then it gets worse, because inevitably the question that follows “How’s the book going?” is “Can I read it?”

When you say, “No! You want to read something, write your own dang book!” people then think you’re rude for some reason.

They don’t understand that if you were to let them read it, they’d be so overwhelmed by the confusing, messy mash of words that is a first draft that they would probably go blind. Then they would spend the rest of their life thinking there should be some sort of law against you being allowed to write words.

You think I’m exaggerating. But here is a real life example of how messy first drafts are:

A couple years ago, I was writing a book. One night I wrote that a side character (we’ll call him Steve to protect his identity) was shot and fell out of a flying plane. By the next day of writing, Steve had apparently made a full recovery and gotten back on the plane even though it hadn’t landed.

But that story had a happy ending because I admired Steve’s moxie so much, I revised his death and he then survived to the end of the book. I imagine he has become a legend among side-characters. “That’s Steve!” they say. “He didn’t just sit back and let his writer kill him off! I hope when I get written, I can be just like him!”

My first drafts are also super long until I go back and take out all the times I typed in the note “Fix this later”. I should save myself time and just name a character in every book Fixthi Slater.

Steve said, “Quick! We have to find Bob before Fixthi Slater kills him!”

Appletini replied, “But how will we end this blog post?”

Just then, Fixthi Slater jumped out from behind some asparagus and forced them to end the blog post.

What DON’T I Not Eat?

People often ask me, “Veronica, did you conduct a hostile Paleo takeover of your household?”

To which I say, “No-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-owhy do you ask?”

“Because you’re throwing away all those frozen waffles.”

“That’s…because…I thought…they…were…part of the last recall.”

“Wasn’t that recall for frozen vegetables?”

“Yes. You know how tomatoes are secretly fruit? Turns out waffles are secretly a vegetable.”

“Are you lying?”

“So’s your face!”

As good as I am at deception, I eventually have to admit that yes, I did in fact catch the Paleo diet. It shouldn’t be that big a surprise, given the sort of reckless dietary restrictions I willingly participate in. I’m gluten intolerant (example: I wouldn’t vote for a gluten to be president, no matter what party it belonged to), so I already eat gluten-free.  And that is the gateway drug to Paleo.

Having been Paleo for upwards of an hour now, I have become an expert and will explain it to you.

“Paleo” is “short” for “paleolithic”, which is Greek.

Or Latin.

Possibly Danish.

Probably not Korean.

Paleolithic is a combination of two words: “Paleo”, meaning coconut oil, and “Lithic”, meaning zucchini noodles.

Back in the Paleolithic period – the time of dinosaurs, Archimedes, and Yahoo – people were much healthier than we are now. Don’t believe me? Just look at these graphs:

Clearly diet is the most determinative part of what kept paleolithic man so much healthier than we are now.

So what sort of thing did paleolithic man eat? Apparently large amounts of coconut oil and zucchini noodles. Stir fry it with a little pterodactyl meat and you’ve got a meal.

In the Paleo diet, all foods fall into one of four categories:

Foods you shouldn’t eat

Foods you REALLY shouldn’t eat

Foods you can eat on very special occasions

Bacon

That’s right, you can eat bacon on Paleo. LOTS of bacon. All the bacon you want. Just look at this quote from the definitive book on Paleo:

“While bacon is technically Paleo, I…recommend eating very much of it.”

(He said some more stuff in the middle there that I omitted for clarity and so that it would support my claim)

You have to use bait to get people to join a group they otherwise wouldn’t want to. Some time-share salesmen offer free hotel stays. Some religions offer things like 72 virgins in Heaven (or in Scientology’s case, 72 Tom Cruises). Paleo’s bait is bacon. It’s the only diet that allows you to eat bacon for seven meals a day and still be perfectly within the confines of your diet. Sure, I can’t eat pizza, but I can eat bacon in the shape of pizza.

And of course I can also eat all the coconut oil I want. Turns out, that isn’t very much.

So really, when I say I’ve gone Paleo, what I mean is I’ve finally given up other foods that aren’t bacon.

And when my doctor says, “You have to eat more than just bacon.”

I say, “I’m healthier than I’ve ever been!”

Then he says, “You have scurvy.”

I say, “Fruit isn’t Paleo.”

He says, “Yes it is.”

And I say, “So’s your face!”

Because human faces are technically Paleo, though you should really only eat grass-fed humans.  Like vegans.

Karma Stole My Power

Me (Talking to myself)(Don’t judge me): Yay, Veronica! You got your grocery shopping done for the whole week! Your fridge is full of meat to cook and your freezer is full of seafood and veggies.

Karma: Hi!

(Power goes out, including to my fridge/freezer)

Karma: Serves you right!

Me: What the heck, Karma? Why did you do that?

Karma: I think you know why.

Me: No, I don’t.

Karma: Yeah you do.

Me: I spent all day grocery shopping!  I didn’t have time to do anything wrong!

Karma: If you think about it, I think you’ll see why.

Me: I paid for everything. I wasn’t mean to anybody. I obeyed the traffic laws. I didn’t even flip off that guy who cut me off. What could I have possibly done to deserve this?

Karma: Really?  You don’t know.  Gee, this isn’t really very effective if you don’t even know what it’s for.

Me: Do you even know?  Are you sure you have the right person?  People call me Valerie a lot for some reason.

Karma: According to my notes, I’m supposed to torment Veronica With The Adorable White Fluffy Dog.

Me: Dang it, that’s me.

Karma: What kind of last name is “With The Adorable White Fluffy Dog?”

Me: I was procrastinating one day and found a place on the internet you could change your last name.

Karma: Well I think you karma’d yourself on that one.  So I’ll just let that one go.  But I can’t overlook the terrible thing you did to bring about your spoiling food.  You lied.

Me: When?

(Karma pulls out big book titled “Veronica’s Faults”)

Me: Wow. That’s kind of a large book.

Karma: And look how small the font is.

Me: You don’t have to rub it in.

Karma (reading from book): It says here that when Jessica asked if you liked Kyle, you said ‘no’ and that was a lie because you are madly in love with Kyle. And lying is bad. Hence your fridge full of rotting food.

Me: Kyle? Kyle who? Wait, are you talking about Kyle my first ever crush? In kindergarten?

Karma: I knew you could figure it out.

Me: You’re doing this because of a lie I told in kindergarten?

Karma: If you can’t do the time…

Me: I’m 30 years old!

Karma: Wow, really? I guess you would be kind of tall for a 5 year old. Look, I’m sorry, but we have fallen a touch behind on these things.

Me: 25 years is a “touch” behind?

Karma: Hey, the economy hit us like everybody. Karma Co. had to lay off a bunch of staff and everyone got pay-cuts. Needlesstosay, morale isn’t great right now and productivity is not what it should be.

Me: Well, isn’t there a statute of limitations on these things or something? I mean punishing me now for something I did in kindergarten seems like too belated of a punishment to be effective. Besides, shouldn’t it count as punishment enough that Kyle didn’t like me? He thought I had cooties and broke my heart.

Karma: You might be right. Well have you at least learned your lesson?

Me: Yes. You can check your book and see that since kindergarten, I have not lied to Jessica once about liking Kyle.

Karma: Well, alright then. My work here is done.

(Power comes back on)

Me: Hey, before you go, can I ask why every single guy who asks me out is on drugs? I mean, I’m assuming that’s you.

Karma: Yes.

Me: Why?

Karma: 1993.

Me:……..Okay, that’s fair.

More Disturbing Than the Presidential Election

I have a new life goal: I want to run for Coroner.

So.

Very.

Much.

Let me be clear here: I don’t want to actually BE coroner. Dead bodies are gross.

Live bodies are pretty gross for that matter.

I just want to run for the office of coroner. The running is the fun part!

Think about it: when you’re running for coroner, you’re urging people to let you mess with dead bodies. You’re trying to convince them that you’d be better at messing with dead bodies than that other guy who wants to mess with dead bodies. There is something beautifully strange about that.

I would love to take running for coroner to its logically twisted conclusion.

The speeches write themselves:

“I am the best person for this job, because I LOVE working on dead bodies. I have so much experience! In my spare time, I’m always going down to my basement to work on the bodies…well, maybe you don’t need to know about that.

“But the point is, with me as your coroner, I promise that there will be more dead-body handling than EVER before! I vow there won’t be a single dead body that these hands will not have touched!

“Most importantly of all, as coroner, I’ll finally have a large enough sample size to publish my study ‘Are Dead Bodies Ticklish?’

“So vote for me. You’ll sleep better at night knowing that, when you get brutally murdered, I’ll be the one who looks inside your stomach to see what you last ate.”

And then there’s the posters:

The only problem is if I somehow accidentally get elected. Then I’d be in trouble. I mean, I’ve got a liberal arts degree. It’s not restrictive like a degree in dentistry or something where you can only go into one career. My degree is broad, qualifying me for any sort of work, really.

So I certainly COULD be coroner.

But dead bodies make me uncomfortable. Cutting open dead bodies makes me pass out. (I suppose I can’t know that for certain until I do it, but I’m pretty certain that would be the outcome.) And, unlike air-traffic controllers, coroner is not a job you can do while you’re unconscious.

But I think my creativity will get me through. I won’t know what really killed people because I can’t cut them open.  But I can come up with some great causes of death that leave no big obvious markings.

Just off the top of my head:

-Drank so much coffee, he suffered internal drowning

-Got lemon juice in a paper cut (it IS that serious)

-Trampled in a fluffy puppy stampede (fluffy puppies leave no marks)

-Apparently he was NOT ready for some football

-Was a constant back-seat driver. His demise was inevitable.

-Spontaneously combusted, but only a little. Not so much that you’d notice.

-Visited a foreign country and didn’t know how to ask where the bathroom was

-Hit a squirrel with his car and then karma struck back, hard

-Couldn’t think of an end to her blog post and suffered a fatal dose of writer’s block

Blog. James Blog.

This was in my “Trending Topics” on Facebook recently:

First of all, I hope they ship the new glass iPhone to people pre-smashed to save time. Because if there’s one thing I’ve heard people say about their smart phones, it’s that they wish their phone was less durable. Now if only they could come up with a way to make the phones less able to make or receive calls, they’d really be onto something!

Secondly, how many James Bonds are they casting in the next movie? I thought 007 was his rank or suit size or something. I didn’t think it meant that in any given movie, there could be at least seven James Bonds.

And why wasn’t I called? I would play a great supporting James Bond.

I am the first to admit that I do not have what it takes to play a leading James Bond. My Sean Connery impersonation sounds suspiciously like SpongeBob Squarepants. (Oddly enough, my SpongeBob Squarepants impression sounds like Sean Bean. I’m really terrible at impressions.) But if they’re making a film with 7 or 8 James Bonds in it, I’m a natural choice. I could pull off a very poignant James Bond #5.

I could even play #4 if I lost a few pounds.

I’m not a huge Bond fan myself, but I would pay real money to watch the sitcom-like situation that is apparently unfolding as they try to cast this movie:

(The scene: a very 90’s living room, because it’s actually illegal to film a sitcom that doesn’t take place in a very 90’s living room)

Steve: Uh-oh!

Brad: What’s wrong, Steve? I haven’t seen you looking this worried since you accidentally had 2 dates to the prom! Or that time you missed an important engagement because you accidentally locked yourself in the basement and/or a broken elevator.

Steve: This is way worse than either of those times, Brad! You know how I’m supposed to be casting the next James Bond film?

Brad: Yeah?

Steve: I think I accidentally promised the part to too many actors.

Brad: Gee, that is a big uh-oh! How many James Bonds did you hire?

Steve: 37.

Brad: 37?! How did you do that?

Steve: It’s that darn reply-all button! Who even invented that?

Brad: Probably the same guy who invented the glass cell phone.

Steve: What am I going to do?

Brad: You’ll just have to tell 36 of them that you made a mistake.

Steve: I can’t! They’re all showing up to the studio to sign their contracts in ten minutes!

Brad: 10 minutes?! How long ago did you send that group email?

Steve: Two months ago.

Brad: Why didn’t you say something sooner?

Steve: Because I locked myself in the basement again, okay?

Brad: You’ve been in the basement for two months? Why didn’t you knock on the door so I could let you out?

Steve: I was too embarrassed. It’s the seventeenth time it’s happened this year.

Brad: You really do seem to have a problem with that door. Anyway, don’t worry. I think I have a plan!

Steve: To keep me from getting locked in the basement?

Brad: No. About the James Bond thing. But we’re both going to have to dress like women for this to work!

Steve: Why is that your solution to everything?

I think the show could make it at least three seasons (1 good one and 2 where people say “I keep hoping it’ll go back to being like that first season”) And these days, with as fast as TV channels create and then cancel series, TV series get counted in dog years. So 3 seasons is like 21 seasons, which is a good run.

I’d love to finish this blog post, but I gotta go practice my SpongeConnery BeanPants impression, just in case.

Strange Interactions

Life is full of strange interactions. Particularly when I am involved.

And, yes, I am usually the stranger rather than the strangee.

I had the occasion to buy Passover cake recently. (This may be strange in itself because I am not Jewish. But this cake is gluten-free and chocolate-marble. So once a year, I watch The Ten Commandments and eat Passover cake.)

Since this cake is a seasonal item, I wasn’t sure where the store would have it. And that’s how this actual conversation actually happened:

Me: Excuse me? Where do you keep the kosher foods?

Clerk: They’re on a special display across from the bacon.

Me: …

Clerk: Do you not know where the bacon is? I can show you.

Me: Of course I know where the bacon is. It’s down the aisle clearly marked “Irony”.

Clerk: Actually, I think it’s aisle 7.

More recently I was at the gas station getting a candy bar and a soda (because I’m a health-nut at heart)(it was an ALMOND snickers. Almonds are healthy, right?) when a guy burst in thru the door and asked loudly, “Where is your air?”

I wanted so badly to give him a big hug and say, “It’s alright! It’s everywhere!”

Sometimes I don’t even have to BE there to be involved in strange interactions. I used to work in a store. One day, I had just returned to work from my day off and found a pair of shorts on my desk with a note with my name on them. They weren’t my shorts, so I wasn’t sure why they were there.

I asked one of my coworkers why I had shorts on my desk. She told me that a gentleman (she hadn’t gotten a name) had come into the store and left the shorts for me, telling her that “I knew what they were for.”

Technically the guy was right: I know what shorts are for. You put them on your legs.

Beyond that, I had no idea why someone was bringing me shorts.

Also, they were Men’s shorts and, seeing as how I am not a Men, that made it all the more confusing.

I never did figure out who had left me the shorts or why. On the other hand, the whole situation did instill in me a desire to start doing weird things like that. I would love to leave weird gifts for my friends, or even complete strangers, at their work when they are not there.

One day you’ll show up to work to find a giant stuffed penguin or perhaps a purple 2×4 sitting on your desk with your name on it. Your coworkers will tell you, “The woman said you knew what it was for.”

At that same store, a gentlemen bought a large furniture item and I was explaining to him that he should drive his truck around to the back of the store where there would be staff members available to load it for him. The man didn’t go get in his truck, but stood there looking at me incredulously. So it was really his fault that we even had this conversation:

Me: Is there a problem?

Man: Where am I suppose to take my truck?

Me: Around to the back of the store. Just follow the driveway.

Man: There isn’t anything back there.

Me: What?

Man: I shop here a lot and I know there isn’t anything behind your store.

Me (Not knowing what the heck he’s talking about and unable to stop myself): Actually we recently expanded from a two dimensional store into a three dimensional store, so there is something back there now.

On what I’m sure is a completely unrelated note, I don’t work at that store anymore.

My point is…actually I don’t have a point this time.

P.S. If you’re reading this and you once left me shorts at my workplace, what the heck is wrong with you? Also, are you single? Because whatever it is that’s wrong with you seems like my type of crazy.