Feed the world, let them know it’s Christmastime

December 30, 2009 31 Comments read (f)Art

On Christmas morn, I struggled out of bed toward my phone, which had been buzzing nonstop for about an hour with ‘MERRY CHRISTMAS OMG’ text messages and at some point, my conscious mind recognized that screeching “BAH HUMBUG, MOTHERFUCKERS” in its general direction wasn’t going to actually make it stop.

…I am not a morning person.

But struggle out of bed I did, and after I fed Napoleon and swigged about a gallon of coffee, I was ready to face the day. First things first–I responded to the wave of texts, and then I was completely and totally free to play with the toys SantaShadowstitch had brought me.

Not just any toys. A battle unicorn, for one. A super uber metal battle unicorn, and when it transforms, the spine is used as a flail for ultimate badassery.

I haven’t yet figured out the teleport mode but once I do, the battle unicorn and I will be zapping all over the damn place.

He also brought me a highly-poseable Castlevania Dracula figure. This figure is currently scaling my giant Elvira, and I can appreciate that sort of mojo.

My mom got me some books and a set of super-sharp knives, because when people see something and think of me, somehow it’s almost always knives of some sort. I’m starting to get a complex.

One of the books was Flim-Flam! Psychics, ESP, Unicorns, and Other Delusions by James Randi. I have begun reading this book, and Randi is pissed that men of science are backing up con artists who claim psychic abilities. The word ‘charlatan’ is used in the first chapter no less than twenty times. I love it. I think that if James Randi ever met Mr. “I consider those who are interested in the occult to be the scientists of the future” Konstantinos, he would slap him across the face. Repeatedly.

I then settled in with Napoleon on the couch and read him ‘The Pirates! In an Adventure with Napoleon’. His favorite part wasn’t even about Napoleon, it was about the Pirate King:

The Pirate King paused for a moment to pull a great white shark from behind his throne and punch it in half with a fist. A fair amount of shark guts went over the tables at the front, but none of the audience minded at all.

Napoleon, you see, is strongly anti-shark ever since he saw that segment on Shark Week with footage of a shark attacking a dog very similar to himself. It reminded him of his own dog mortality, and he does not like that one bit. He is almost as anti-shark as he is anti-midget.

After storytime, we took a nap. Then, I looked at the kitchen, which had turned into a nightmare zone with all of the baking I’d been doing, and just looking at it made me feel like I needed yet another nap.

Eventually, Anne came to pick me up for Christmas dinner at her place with her sister. My official capacity was to keep them from rumbling under the Christmas tree, but I am a terrible person to pick for that function as I almost always encourage fights.

After dinner, things got a bit silly. I had only had one glass of wine, I think Anne’s sister had two, and Anne herself didn’t have any, so I can’t really explain WHY we all got slapstick-y at once. Maybe Trader Joe’s is injecting interesting chemicals into their food.

All I know is that after we listened to Ultraman Ukelele (which you should also pause and watch, right this very moment):

we began to play a game called ‘Bananagrams’ which is a bit like Scrabble in that you are building interconnected words from tiles drawn from a central pile, but instead of taking turns on a board, everyone works independently, and the first person to use all their tiles when the pool is down to less than the total amount of players wins.

You see, I got caught up while playing. In an effort to finish the word ‘quaalude’, I drew far too many tiles using the method where one dumps a letter back in the pool and draws three in exchange and ended up with a hot mess of letters, far too many to attempt to win the game. My brain locked up. I lumped everything together and smiled winningly.

You should know that ‘juggaaalo’ is a totally acceptable spelling of the word if you say it like you’re screaming in horror at the mere idea of seeing a live one, which is how everyone should say it, anyway.

But ‘Hottenfoyzingoux’–there was no way I was getting away with that one.

One by one, it struck us funny. We began to make up definitions, etymology, and laugh more and more hysterically. We decided that Hottenfoyzingoux was semi-Swedish, and would be the name of something sold at IKEA.

Then it happened: We made Anne laugh so hard she vomited. I’ve never seen anything like it in my life before. One minute, she was laughing hysterically, the next minute, she was running for the bathroom and her placemat and carpet were stained–victims in a game of war they weren’t even playing.

Uh, Merry Christmas?

…If I’m giving people the gift of vomit, no wonder they think of me when they see knives.

Family Home Evening

December 28, 2009 18 Comments read Everything is Terrible

I spent Christmas Eve with Aisling’s family–I’ve been there often enough that I’ve pretty well been embraced as part of the family, like inbred cousin Cletus who just shows up on the doorstep, and you feed him because you don’t want him to eat roadkill or starve but ultimately it’s a mistake because he just keeps coming back. I’m that guy.

Like a couple of years ago, we again played the name game. We didn’t pull any magically hilarious names out of the ether like Sir Charles Titswamp this time, but I must admit to being delighted when someone pulled one of my contributions to the box, didn’t recognize the character, and had to do mental gymnastics to get someone to guess it. Especially when the reward was finding out she’d been focusing on a talking piece of Christmas poo.

After the name game, this year we had a white elephant so that we might all share love and joy and the worst gifts ever conceived. You might ask how it is that I ALWAYS have something at home to bring to a white elephant, and I might ask you to shut up, embarrassed that I live such a tacky life.

I walked away with this gem:

This DVD contains the sixteen greatest minutes of footage ever committed to film. It’s so good, they had to copyright it twice. It’s so good, it makes sixteen minutes feel like an hour. It’s so good, it’s not embarrassed about using the same footage a few times over the course of said sixteen minutes. Not only has it taught me everything about building the world’s best family, it’s also taught me that the world is a cruel place and the only place you are actually safe is WITH your awesome family. Additionally, it has taught me the importance of fun activities and enjoying refreshments. One thing that can be constituted as a fun activity is jumping on a trampoline in a circle, holding hands with your family. This is why I am deadly, seriously, honest-to-god-no-lie proposing an outing to Sky High Sports with as many people as I can convince to come with me, with delicious refreshments before or after depending on how people feel about eating and bouncing. I will build a family with you people whether you like it or not. How does Saturday, January 16th look for everyone? Here is a hint: It had better look good. Family members who do not participate in family outings are subject to vicious beatings. That’s the way my family works.

Adventures in Tukwila

December 22, 2009 21 Comments read Masticating With Mellzah

On Saturday, Aisling picked me up to do some last-minute christmas shopping for her family and do a bit of selfish shopping as well. I keep maybe one awesome pair of walking shoes around at a time, and over the course of the last month, I’ve put enough miles on them that I’ve worn the soles completely through. When shoes begin to leak water, it is time to replace them or face the gross consequences, so replacing them was high on my list of priorities.

We started our afternoon at Starbucks, where we used a grand total of four cards to pay for two coffees because we are awesome. I had been carrying around two gift cards worth about three bucks total for the last year or so, Aisling had her gold card, and then we put the rest of the balance on a card because neither of us carry cash. We are the douchebag twins.

I wasn’t able to find any light-up shoes with dinosaurs on them…this time, but I am fully confident by the time I need another pair of shoes, at least one shoe company will have a product out taking my special needs into consideration.

All of the mall employees we encountered were ultra-mega surly, and I don’t blame them one bit–working retail around the holidays is no treat, even when you take special steps to entertain yourself. Aisling and I took it in stride, and decided one of our day’s activities should be to find our sleep number. The sleep number store was full of beds and no employees. We looked at each other, looked around, shrugged, and picked out a bed. Just as we started taking photographic evidence, an employee came out and growled, “What do you want?”

“Um, uh, we wanted to find our sleep number.”

“Go nuts.”

After we settled in and started fiddling with the remotes, the employee came back with a special remote that adjusted both the head and the foot of the bed and also turned on a vibrate mode. I couldn’t help exclaiming, “Oh my god, it’s like being in a cheap motel only at home!” and I believe this is when the employee decided we were not assholes and began to make surly jokes WITH us.

Aisling and I have decided that we both need vibrating sleep number beds in our lives, and both of our sleep numbers are the same: 35. We must have spent an hour in the sleep number store, and while neither of us actually slept, we both left feeling rested, and not just in the ‘hey, I’ve been on my ass for an hour’ sense.

We then proceeded to try on fuzzy hats, annoy more clerks, have a dressing room fashion show, and find magic jeans. Bonus: all of this walking coupled with my reluctance to trudge up the hill to buy groceries has caused me to go down a full pants size and then some. Negative: I now must wear belts, wash and dry on hot, or face inevitable humiliation. No one needs to know I wear spongebob underpants.

…aww, crap.

After our shopping shenanigans, we decided to go eat dinner in an exotic locale that can be accessed without a passport–the Rainforest Cafe. Neither one of us had been there since we were little kids (or annoying tweens, whatever), and we’re both big enough people to admit that we’d like to enjoy some animatronic animals with dinner.

We thrilled and clapped like children at the robot animals, the giant tanks of fish, the copious amounts of neon signage, and the contrived thunderstorm.

The servers at the Rainforest Cafe were no exception to the ‘surly employees’ rule, shuffling off to grab our shared appetizer and almost grumbling at the idea that we were going to split the appetizer, skip dinner, and split dessert. However, if you were in our position, you would’ve done the same thing. There’s no way we would have had room for both dinner AND a brownie with a sparkler crammed in it, and whenever I have the rare opportunity to order something with a sparkler crammed in it, I am going to take it, come hell or high water or grumbling servers.

Plus it DARES me to eat it, right on the goddamn advertisement, by implying I am a weenie if I don’t brave the volcano. I don’t like being called a weenie. Not one bit.

As with all things, it was good until it wasn’t. Toward the end of the appetizer, one of us (I won’t say name names, but it’s the person who ALWAYS has this sort of thing happen and then blogs about it as if she’s befuddled) scooped up some dip with a chip and then pulled a terrible, terrible face as she picked a kinky hair that belonged to neither party at the table out of her mouth. The server came back and when we pointed out the hair, she huffed and said she’d get the manager, but not before she asked if we wanted our dessert. Sorry, the hair sort of killed it for us. Not even the presence of a sparkler could bring back the carefree attitude of five minutes prior.

A not insignificant amount of time passes. All the while, the unnamed party can still feel the offending hair in her mouth, even without its physical presence.

The manager eventually wandered over to our table. “Hello ladies, I hear we’ve had some difficulty with a foreign object in our food this evening.” The hair on the plate is again pointed out. He then asks if we’d like a fresh appetizer. “No. No, thank you.” “Oh, ok.” He grabs the plate and leaves. Aisling and I shared a confused look. Is the situation resolved? Maaaaybe?

After another long period, the server stalked back to our table and slapped down our bill. OH. The situation HAD been resolved. Look, lady, even though the meal has been removed from the bill, I still intended to tip you as if it were there…but when you treat me like shit, it makes it more difficult for me to do the right thing.

I think this should be the Rainforest Cafe’s new motto: Fun Until It Isn’t.