Lorca Damon's Blog, page 11

I Got Totally Gipped on this Elk I Bought

I really try to avoid dabbling in black market purchases, because with my luck, I’d end up accidentally purchasing an endangered elephant tusk filled with heroin and ground up black rhino horn. Even though the inmates at the jail taught me how to buy pot in the local government assisted housing (not kidding…kinda wish I was. Okay, really wish I was…), I’m just too chicken to buy any kind of contraband whatsoever. The guy could still be wearing his cop uniform and holding his Narc School Diploma, and I would still be clueless enough to fall into his sting operation.

So when I was offered the chance to procure a really big buttload of elk meat, I approached the deal with a lot of caution. How could I be sure that this wasn’t black market elk that had been inhumanely killed AND it was the last surviving male of the species? With my luck, there would have been oodles of elk running around, and I would be the person to illegally buy the last known elk because they had all died of rot-hoof, or something. I could be facing hard time.

Luckily, I happen to know the person who shot this contraband elk, and it was all on the up and up. He shot it, someone packaged it, I froze it. The end.

Except, I’m starting to notice a couple of things. First of all, unless this was an anorexic elk, there’s way too little meat. Unless elk are nothing but fluff, this thing is scrawny. Also, this elk tastes very cow-y, like maybe the little bit of meat they did manage to scrape off the bone was so puny that they had to mix it with beef, just to make it fill up more than a zip lock sandwich baggie.

On the bright side, elk is a very tender meat, at least the parts that are genuine elk. It doesn’t have the gamey taste that bald eagle does and it has far less gristle than polar bear. Oh stop, you know I don’t eat endangered food. I would be so busted if I did.

I Sit At The Cool Table. Suck It.

I’ve got connections, and I mean, like, more connections than a Sicilian mob boss’s PR person. I have a whole crew of awesome people who let me be awesome by hanging out very near their awesomeness, so I am awesome vicariously. One of my coolest awesome people, DC McMillan, actually nominated me for not one-but-two awesome blog awards.

First, she nominated me for Blog of the Year Award, which is really cool because it’s only January but she has somehow decided that I am already better than anything that anyone can possibly do for the year. You know about things looking good in hindsight? I look good in foresight. (NOTE: there may have been something about this really being for 2012, but that still means I beat out NASA’s blog about that stupid robot landing on Mars.)

Second, she nominated me for the Very Inspiring Blogger Award. I’m pretty sure it was for my charity work. Well, it might have been the blog post about how we shouldn’t run over manatees with powerboats while they’re trying to have sex and repopulate the manatee world. That counts. Shut up, it does too count. As part of this second award, I have to tell you seven things about myself. Go ahead and take your meds first.

1. If our plane crashed in the wilderness like on Lost, I could whittle a needle out of a twig and make some thread out of the intestines of a small animal and give you stitches to save your life. But I can’t pull teeth. I would throw up in your open mouth if you asked me to pull your tooth.

2. I can smell underwater. Don’t get excited, that doesn’t mean I can breathe underwater. I don’t know why that is.

3. I have a teddy bear I got when I was nine. I named him Gallagher after the guy who smashes the fruit.

4. I’ve never seen Fantasy Island, The Andy Griffith Show, or Love Boat. I’m not a moron, I know what those shows are, I’ve just never seen a whole episode of any of them.

5. I’ve also never eaten a Big Mac in my entire life. I’m five-a-and-half feet tall…where would I put it?

6. I once drove the U-Haul truck carrying all of the equipment for the US men’s water polo team, but I only drove it that one time because I swung into McDonald’s for something to eat (not for a Big Mac) and got it stuck under that little bar that hangs over the drive-thru speaker to let you know how high the clearance is.

7. I came really close to being named Sterling. Good one, Mom and Dad.

Now for the fun part. Just like in my college sorority days (shut up, I was too in a sorority!), I get to pick some people to nominate for awesomeness. I officially nominate IAmDumbSquared.com for Blog of the Year because it makes me laugh and kind of makes me feel really smart. As for the Very Inspiring Thing, my favorite blogs in the world are Solomon Inkwell‘s spooky-fun site, Sweet Sheil’s Fear Not blog, Erica Lucke Dean‘s fun-on-the-farm blog, the Fadderly blog, the Andi-Roo blog, and Julia Rachel Barrett‘s…um…quirky blog.

All the fine print is below:

Blogger of the Year:

1 Select the blog(s) you think deserve the ‘Blog of the Year 2012’ Award

2 Write a blog post and tell us about the blog(s) you have chosen – there’s no minimum or maximum number of blogs required – and ‘present’ them with their award.

3 Please include a link back to this page ‘Blog of the Year 2012’ Award – http://thethoughtpalette.co.uk/our-awards/blog-of-the-year-2012-award/   and include these ‘rules’ in your post (please don’t alter the rules or the badges!)

4 Let the blog(s) you have chosen know that you have given them this award and share the ‘rules’ with them

5 You can now also join our Facebook group – click ‘like’ on this page ‘Blog of the Year 2012’ Award Facebook group and then you can share your blog with an even wider audience

6 As a winner of the award – please add a link back to the blog that presented you with the award – and then proudly display the award on your blog and sidebar … and start collecting stars…

Very Inspiring Blogger Award:

Display the award logo on your blog.
Link back to the person who nominated you.
State 7 things about yourself.
Nominate 15 bloggers for this award and link to them.
Notify those bloggers of the nomination and the award’s requirements.

This Shirt Means Instant Birth Control

I just got back from another whirlwind trip to NY for my job and I’m pretty fried. That could be why THIS struck me as so inappropriately funny while still being just the saddest thing ever.

Wow. Just…wow.

This shirt was actually for sale in the Sky Mall catalog in the seat back on the airplane (go ahead, click that link and see if I’m lying). It’s name is The One Of A Kind Shirt. It retails for between $99 and $299, depending on the size you need, and no, you don’t get to pick the color scheme. It is seriously made from the parts of other shirts, like a Frankenshirt for douche bags who have more money than brains.

The greatest asset this shirt can offer you is total birth control, and I mean, like, somehow even more effective than abstinence. If you even own one of these shirts, let alone were actually wearing it for a night on the town, you will never need to worry about being slapped with a paternity suit after a drunken encounter at a bar because there is no way in hell you fathered a child with anyone. Not even a colorblind, legally blind, vision impaired person. Simply putting ON the shirt causes impotence and hanging the shirt in your closet causes all your sperm to die at once.

In other only vaguely related news, my husband needed to know all kinds of interesting stuff about birth control for church (that’s a whole other blog post), so I helped him look up lots of information on birth control. Turns out, God thinks we’re doing it wrong. If we were  in the Duggar family’s church, we’re twenty-three children short of the goal, but if we were Unitarian, God thinks we’re actually going for overkill by having as many kids as we already have. I started explaining things to him with the basics since I’m a biology teacher, but my husband’s eyes glazed over before I even finished explaining barrier method vs chemical method. I’m just gonna buy him this shirt instead.

Stephen Hawking Is Scary Smart And So Am I

Someone just Googled “stephen hawking chalkboard” and somehow the cruelty that is the Universe took them to my blog. Which totally makes sense, since I’m just as smart as he is. Wait. I take that back. Especially since I misspelled Stephen Hawking.

However, I did get to schmooze like a total fan girl with LeVar Burton at a conference I went to in New York this week. LeVar Burton is not only the guy from Roots AND the guy from Reading Rainbow AND the guy from Star Trek, he’s also the powerhouse behind a whole new kind of publishing company that makes books for kids on iPads. He’s like the trifecta of smart-awesomeness. Wait. Quadrifecta. I, however, would be the de-fecta, since I also misspelled LeVar Burton’s name in this post.

Yup. That’s me with the awesomeness that is LeVar Burton. Drink it all in.

It’s Like You’re Not Even Trying Anymore

I really do feel for all the lonely people out there who have to resort to typing random email addresses in an attempt to find love. These poor people sit at their computers, probably in darkened sleazy hotel rooms, unable to sleep and just hoping to find a special someone.

The same is true for members of the former royal family of about eighteen African countries, people who need my help to smuggle their money out of the country.

Apparently, cute little Chinese girls who work as bank tellers also send out these desperate virtual message-in-a-bottle emails, hoping someone will reply and help them embezzle money from deceased account holders who died without an heir, digitally pulling the money out of the bank in exchange for a fifty-fifty split.

At least, all of that is how it used to work. There used to at least be some tiny spark of human connection as the Nigerian equivalent of a telemarketer typed your email address off a list they bought from that as-seen-on-tv thing you ordered online, then proceeded to tell you his tale of woe. Not anymore.

They’re not even trying. There used to be a whole sales pitch, a whole story about deposed kings and lost love connections. Some of them even offered up a prayer for your health and prosperity before asking if they could be your new online lover. Now, it’s a few crappy words about how I won some lottery somewhere. I received one yesterday that was even a fill-in-the-blank, like the telemarketer was new and didn’t know not to just cut and paste it from his playbook.

Is it too much to ask for you to make up some really outrageous story before you try to swindle me out of my life savings? If I’m going to turn over my bank account numbers, my Social Security number, and my blood type, can’t you wine me and dine me a little bit with some song and dance about a dead guy leaving $16 million unclaimed in his bank account? Maybe tell me all kinds of sordid details about what the government of China could do to its citizens if it gets its hands on his money? At the very least, could you try to rob me in English by taking that extra time to go to Google Translate and send me your sob story in a language I can actually READ???

I hate to be the one to complain, but it’s like there’s no dedication to one’s job anymore, no pride taken in one’s work. Even jerkoff thieves need to have some level of quality control.

 

You’re a Douche if You Kill a Manatee

My children’s awesome best-friend-of-the-family-who’s-so-close-to-us-we-call-her-aunt gave one of my kids a manatee for Christmas. You’re thinking of a stuffed animal shaped like a football with a goofy grin on its face. Nope. A manatee. An actual one. See? You don’t get to be a best-friend-of-the-family-who’s-so-close-to-us-we-call-her-aunt of mine without being as weird as I am.

Once my kiddo opened the gift and there was a picture of a manatee that we apparently now have to feed, walk, and cleanup after, I was suspicious. I don’t know anything about care and maintenance of your manatee. I would kill this animal faster than a ring toss goldfish if I wasn’t careful. I had to Google “manatees” to see what was going on with this thing.

As it turns out, manatees are endangered. Way to go, Aunt. You not only gave me a live animal to take care of, but you gave me an ENDANGERED one? Heck, the thing was endangered the minute you attached my name to it! There are a couple of times a week I have to think really hard about whether or not the kids got fed, and they’re sitting right in front of me!

While Googling “how to not kill your manatee,” I got distracted by all the shiny facts about manatees. Did you know that the rumors about hottie mermaids swimming around the ship in the olden days were probably manatee sightings? Do you know how long you must have been at sea AND how delirious from lack of fresh drinking water you had to be to think a manatee was a half-human, half-fish who was giving you a sexy look? Sailors had to have been really hard up for some tail (get it?) if they thought manatees were Ariel rocking the shell bra.

I also learned that manatees are just about the dumbest migrating animals ever, since they go north in the winter and south in the summer. I’m sure they have their reasons, I just don’t know what they are. Still, being football-shaped, dumb, and possibly overtly sexual towards lonely sailors does not mean they should get run over by a boat, which is apparently the leading cause of death for manatees. Not sailor STDs, like I originally thought when I read that whole “they’re not mermaids” thing.

Manatees don’t bother a soul, they just like to kind of loll about in the water and eat these cabbage-shaped things. You never hear about rabid manatee attacks, and they don’t go around leaking a sex tape, staging fake weddings, or having Kanye West’s babies like some other creatures we know. They just float there, minding their own business, probably trying to have lots of manatee sex so they can stop being on the endangered species list, when BAM! They get hit by a redneck driving a speedboat. Have you ever been hit by a boat while having sex? Humans would be endangered too if every time we tried to reproduce some dumbass ran us over with an Evinrude.

That’s why we all have to adopt a manatee. Thanks to our crazy aunt, we are now part owners of a manatee named Zewie. It apparently takes a lot of money to keep a manatee as fat and happy as they like to be, so we are, like, 1/53rd-part owners of this animal. I hope we got the left flipper. Because his other flipper is kind of messed up looking from being hit by a boat propeller. Possibly while having sex. But it wasn’t with a sailor, so it’s okay.

NOTE: You can adopt your own 1/53rd of a manatee by clicking HERE. They’re such cool people that they not only have live-streaming manatee cams that you can watch instead of cat videos on YouTube, but they don’t even mind that this was probably the stupidest article about manatees ever. And possibly the most slanderous towards both manatees and sailors.

Photo by David Schrichte, who did not think it was a mermaid. It’s still really, really cute and it shouldn’t have to be endangered.

I Really Do Need a Butler

I watched my first-ever episode of Downton Abbey over the weekend. It was an entirely surreal, out-of-body experience. You might first be thinking to yourself, “Lorca, you’re an English teacher and an author and a generally all-around badass…how is it you haven’t seen Downton Abbey before this?” There is a great explanation: I’m lazy. I would have had to stand up to turn on the television, and plus it comes on really late at night and I like sleep more than I like Maggie Smith. (And btw, her character plays a real sniveling bitch. Just sayin’, PBS. I kept waiting for her to yell out, “Ten points from the kitchen staff!”)

I do admit that I fully enjoyed the four and a half hours of my life that get sucked out of my soul while watching it. It’s like the British are trying to stick it to the Americans by saying, “We’ll teach you not to steal our TV shows and horde them for yourselves, acting like you are all somehow cultured for having watched it! We’re going to make THIS one have episodes that drag on forever and have no commercial breaks! Take that, you Monty Python-stealing hooligans!”

After the show went off and my eyes refocused, I tried to stand up and go to bed and the most horrible thing happened. No one opened the door for me. I swear to you I stood there waiting at my bedroom door for about ten minutes before I realized I am not actually a member of the Downton clan and therefore do not have servants who open doors. It was horribly confusing. Everyone else I had just seen for the entire episode walked up to a door and someone opened it. I wasn’t really sure what to do with my hands at that point.

Then, after kind of getting over myself for my lack of household staff, I had a truly sobering thought. Everybody, and I mean EVERYBODY, who watches programs like that and gets all dreamy and starry-eyed about the show thinks it would have been so cool to live back then because they are mistakenly deluding themselves into thinking they would have been part of the aristocracy. Compared to the seven or eight random snots who waltz through the house having doors opened for them and sherry glasses poured for them, there were like 53 servants running around doing the opening and the pouring. Statistically, we all would have been kitchen staff or laundry wenches.

With my luck, I would have had to start my scullery career at the bottom and work my way up, you know, like being all jazzed that at fourteen years old I had been hired on in the giant mansion and my first job would have been Oven Tester, so I was the person who had to stick my head in the oven and hold it in there to see if it was hot enough since apparently thermometers didn’t come along until episode 23. If I was really good at my job, I could work my way up to Chief Butter Churner, supervising the crew of people who worked tirelessly to put butter on the table.

I do feel like I should point out to the universe that if I ever were fortunate enough to somehow end up as Countess of Something, I would be really awesome to my servants. Just in case the universe was waffling on making this happen.

So Are You Gonna Cook Me Some Chicken, Or Not?

I have decided that it’s not actually talking ugly about someone if you a) do it right in front of them so they can hear you and b) if you are completely right. I tried to buy some chicken. That was “some chicken,” not “a chicken,” as in an entire live chicken, but I can see how you might be confused since I once actually paid for part of a  llama with real live money. Anyway, I wanted to buy some chicken, as in cooked pieces from the deli. But alas, it was not to be…because the chicken pimp was stupid.

NOTE: I’m not really sure her official title within the company is actually “chicken pimp.” I made that up. Because she’s stupid. Now, instead of being a mildly-trained deli food service technician, I have decided she’s a chicken pimp because she sells chicken. If I were to sell people, I would be a pimp. Ergo, she’s a chicken pimp.

I wanted wings. This always cracks my mother up, because when she was growing up on the cotton farm, the wings were the “poor people parts.” Rich people ate the white meat, poor people bought the wings. Nowadays, you will pay more in a fine establishment for a wing than she would have had to pay for an entire chicken as a kid.

Technically, I didn’t want the wings. People who eat wings by gnawing on the tiny bones always look like a caveman who is just thrilled to death that he didn’t have to fight a mammoth for this meal. They’re ridiculously tiny, almost like that scene in Big where Tom Hanks is trying to eat the decorative baby corns like they are corn on the cob. Nibble, nibble, nibble, gnaw, suck, slurp. Wipe, if there’s napkin handy.

My daughter, however, LOVES wings. Loves ‘em like a caveman. So I went to the deli in the grocery store where they pimp out the cooked chicken, and asked if it was possible to purchase some wings that didn’t have any sauce or seasoning on them and even bothered to explain that it was for a darling little girl who has severe food allergies.

PIMP: Yeah, sure, we can do that. We just have to cook them and then not put stuff on them.  (Already that observation made her magna cum laude of chicken pimping.)

ME: Awesome! My daughter will be so excited! So, can I get about half a pound?

PIMP: We would have to cook them fresh.

ME: Yes. Yes, you would.

PIMP: We got all these wings to sell first.

ME: Oh, I see. So you can’t cook me some new ones?

PIMP: We can, we just can’t open a new bag of wings until these are gone.

ME: So what you’re saying is, you can’t cook me some wings.

PIMP: No, that’s not what I’m saying. I’m saying, these have to get sold first.

ME: Then you can cook the new wings.

PIMP: Well, I can cook them any time. I just have to get rid of all these first.

ME: So, no. You can’t cook ME some wings RIGHT NOW to take HOME. RIGHT NOW.

PIMP: No, I can totally cook them. After these are all gone.

ME (turning to my other child, whose eyes had already glazed over by this point): I don’t think this person knows what “cooking them right now” means.

HER: SHHHHHHHH!

ME: I asked for wings. She said yes. But then she said no. And then she said yes. And then she said no.

HER: SHHHHHHHHH! She’s standing right there!

ME: So what? I don’t think she can hear me.

HER: Of course she can hear you! She’s two feet away and she’s looking at us and everything, and besides, you are not even pretending to whisper!

ME: But if she did hear me, she will just instantly think that she didn’t hear me. Then she MIGHT think again that she did hear me, but it will be okay since she will immediately think that she didn’t hear me.

HER: Oh my gosh, you have to stop talking. She’s, like, rolling up her sleeves and coming around the counter!

Sadly, I did not get some chicken, non-mammoth caveman wings or otherwise. Luckily, I didn’t get a beat down either, which is really good because I’ve heard those pimps can really bitch-slap you good.

The Pizza’s Secret Ingredient Is Crack

Have you ever tried smearing yourself with peanut butter and walking into a room full of poodles? No? Just me? Oh, well, then you might not understand that visual.

One of our cute young tax deductions has autism and when she was a tiny tot we started the gluten-free, casein-free diet with her. It works for her, helps her feel better, etc. Starting it as young as she did, she never really missed out on a lot of stuff. I mean, you can get these special ordered donuts and cheese and stuff, but once a block of dairy-free, vegan cheddar alternative has been shipped on a truck, there’s really not a lot of point in eating it. Plus, all that stuff is really expensive because the manufacturers know that you’ll pay for it, damn the expense!

This is seriously the cheese she has to eat. If it has to tell you that it will melt, it probably won’t. And it doesn’t.

But last night, my husband called and told me he would pick up a pizza on his way home. I can’t tell you the name of the pizza place because they’re really expensive and I don’t want to be ugly by saying, “Your artichoke and feta pizza with the crushed diamonds sprinkled on the hormone-free, free-range Louis Vuitton cheese is a little too pricey.” Interestingly, this pizza place is a national retail chain and they have a very drug-lifestyle motif, which is hilarious because if you’ve smoked enough weed that you need to eat an entire spring-water dough pizza, you can no longer afford this place.

I looked online to figure out which one of their pizzas we could afford without selling a body part on the black market, and noticed that they now have a pizza whose dough is gluten-free and whose cheese is all-natural vegan cheese. Okay then! I purposely did not look at the price of that concoction because I knew I would back out. My kid has literally never eaten pizza in her entire life, and by golly she’s gonna have some pizza! Sadly, I figured out later that this particular pizza was not expensive because of the fancy cheese or the hand-wrought crust.

It was because it’s made of crack.

It has to be. No one in the history of eating, fat people and marijuana smokers included, has ever gone this ape shit for a pizza, especially one with soy cheese on top. We got the kid all excited with this great build up of anticipation (just in case it was really nasty and we wanted her to eat it anyway), only to have her make these really seizure-like faces the whole time that she was eating. Correction: the whole time that she ate THREE slices. It was the peanut-butter-poodle fight all over again as she’s dancing our legs, clutching at the greasy box we were tossing back and forth in a game of keep away, just trying to keep her from eating herself into pukedom.

I woke up this morning to said child holding one of my eyelids open and stage whispering, “K’ai have pizza?” She is downstairs as we speak fighting off the Dachshund for her second slice of the day. THAT is a food-dog visual you do not want to experience.

The Real End of the World. Not the Mayan Kind.

Be ready, the world is ending. Trust me, I mean it this time. I was pretty sure that if Harold Camping’s May 22nd and the Mayan’s December 21st didn’t come through for us, surely this being the first year since 1987 that doesn’t have repeating numerals in the four digits that make up the year had to mean something.

There are a lot of signs of an impending apocalypse, and I’m not talking about more of that “be ready, the zombies are coming” crap. I also don’t mean the Mayans again, whom I had really hoped were right just so we could stop being stupid with the comical threats of apocalii (that’s the new made-up plural of apocalypse…so sayeth me). Signs the world is going to end soon:

1) Milk costs more than beer.

2) Both of those cost less than an equivalent amount of Play Doh.

3) The highest paid internet star is a cat.

4) The cat has a staff of people who keep it secluded from hordes of fans who want to lick its fur and collect its droppings.

5) Those fans are actually human beings.

6) There are TWO different TV shows about how Amish people act a lot like the cast of Jersey Shore.

7) Someone, somewhere, decided to allow Kim Kardashian to reproduce. The future offspring already has a TV show in the works, even though there is a “learns to walk upright” clause.

Please, asteroid that hurtled frighteningly close to our planet (well, frighteningly close in NASA miles…it was really far away in “I have to walk there” miles), please come back and take another swipe at us. And if you do know the date you will hit us, please be considerate to let me know if it will be in the morning or afternoon, unlike those fundamentalist Christians and ancient civilization people.