Commuterrant

U.S. Launches Initiative to Conserve Energy, Make Us Happy

As a follow-up to the early implementation of Daylight Savings Time, which began yesterday morning at 2:00am, the U.S. Congress has quietly passed a law mandating that, effective next Sunday, March 18th at midnight, March will officially become June. All residents are urged to move their calendars three pages ahead, to avoid any confusion.

"Not only will making June earlier this year save lots of energy," said Congressman Ed Markey, who spearheaded the original Daylight Savings Time measure, "having summer arrive three months earlier than usual will lift everyone’s spirits!" He added, "Next Sunday, you can turn off your heat, plan your weekends at the beach and get out your gas grill!"

While the early arrival of June promises to lift the spirits of many, some business and educational leaders are noting that the calendar change will have other ramifications. “It’s going to be a bitch to try to schedule meetings,” said Spencer Haven, CEO of SpagTek, Ltd.

"My class is going to go bonkers when I tell them school’s getting out three months early," noted Leslie Bugg, an elementary school teacher from Waukesha, Wisconsin. "My birthday’s in April," her 5 year-old son Preston added, sadly.

Confession re: Dannielynn

I have a confession. I am the real father of Anna Nicole Smith's baby, Dannielynn Birkhead von Anhalt Smith-Stern. And I have proof:

 

The resemblance is uncanny, and Anna Nicole and I did have one unforgettable night of parthenogenesistic (parthenogenetic?) bliss, right around the time of Dannielynn's conception.

I haven't been blogging lately because I've been so busy traveling, providing DNA, obtaining DNA, locking Howard out of the mansion and so on. But, come hell or highwater, I will claim my child!

Uncannily Correct Quiz Answer

I don't usually take these wacky online quizzes, but I just had to check this one out. And lo and behold, I passed!

What American accent do you have? Your Result: Philadelphia   Your accent is as Philadelphian as a cheesesteak!  If you're not from Philadelphia, then you're from someplace near there like south Jersey, Baltimore, or Wilmington.  if you've ever journeyed to some far off place where people don't know that Philly has an accent, someone may have thought you talked a little weird even though they didn't have a clue what accent it was they heard.
The Northeast
The Midland
The Inland North
The South
Boston
The West
North Central
What American accent do you have? Take More Quizzes

Friday Random iPod Bad Workout Ten

Several blogmates are fond of the weekly ritual of posting songs from their iPods-on-shuffle-mode, to give a little insight into their tastes and personalities. In that spirit, I present 10 very bad workout songs from my iPod.*

-Silent All These Years, Tori Amos
-Superstar, Bette Midler
-Love Has No Pride, Bonnie Raitt
-Goodbye to Love, the Carpenters
-That's the Way I've Always Heard It Should Be, Carly Simon
-The Fiddle and the Drum, Joni Mitchell
-Angel, Sarah McLachlan
-That I Would Be Good, Alanis Morissette

...wait a minute, why are these all by women!?
-41 Shots, Bruce Springsteen
-Simple Twist of Fate, Bob Dylan

I think I just fell asleep on the elliptical.

*For the record, I am ashamed to admit that I don't own a sleek, cool, attractive iPod; I own a Creative Zen something-or-other. It's not as pretty, but it holds about a billion songs.

Bruegger's - A Corporate Sniffing Policy?

Last week, I urgently needed an Everything Bagel, so I went to the neighborhood Bruegger's. I was waiting in line while two Bruegger's employees behind the counter were discussing something. One, a young man, said in response to the other, "I don't know..." and picked up a scooper filled with cream cheese and brought it up to his nose, sniffing deeply. He said, "It's chive," and threw the scooper back in the vat. He then looked up at me, with a dot of cream cheese on his nose.

"Can I help you?" he asked, wiping his nose with his sanitary, be-gloved hand.

Eww. You just sniffed the cream cheese. Not only did you sniff it, you touched it with your nose. And you put the scooper back in the vat. There is now nose contaminating the cream cheese.

These are the thoughts that ran through my head while I stood there, mute. I kept waiting for him to acknowledge what he had done. But he didn't. I went ahead with my purchase (no cream cheese) and left.

...and then I remembered. Many months ago, my wife went to the same Bruegger's to pick up some bagels, as well as a muffin for one of the kids. She ordered a corn muffin, and the employee picked it up out of the basket and said to a colleague, "Is this corn or vanilla?" The employee took the muffin, held it up to his nose and inhaled. "Nope, vanilla," and tossed it back in the basket.

Since when did it become appropriate for food handlers to SNIFF the food they are handling? Is this a new company policy? The manager tells everyone during the morning pep talk, "Now let's go out there and sell some bagels! And remember, a sniffed bagel is a fresh bagel! Put your nose all over those bagels!"  Should I assume that there are boogers on my Bruegger's bagels?

NFL Bans Pedophile-Penned Fight Song

I'm catching up on my blog reading, and I just learned via Attytood that Newsweek reports:

"The NFL has effectively banned stadiums from playing Gary Glitter's 'Rock and Roll Part 2' after the Brit rocker was convicted of molesting underage girls in Vietnam, prompting a search for a substitute celebratory anthem."

Many NFL teams are now looking for a new, rousing fight song, and the Patriots are polling fans in order to select one. Among the choices are Ain't Talking 'Bout Love by Van Halen and Yeah by Usher.

What!? I give you a lyrics sampler:

Van Halen:
I heard the news baby
All about your disease
Yeah, you may have all you want baby
But I got somethin' you need. Oh, yeah!
Ain't talkin' 'bout love
My love is rotten to the core
Ain't talkin' 'bout love
Just like I told you before. Yeah, before
(and later)
Mmm, so if you want it, got to bleed for it baby
Yeah! Got to, got to bleed, baby
Mmm, you got to, got to bleed, baby
Hey! Got to, got to bleed baby

What does that have to do with football?

and Usher:
These women all on the prowl, If ya hold the head steady I'm a milk the cow.
And forget about the game I'm spit the truth, I won't stop til I get em in their birthday suits.
So gimmie the rhythm and it'll be off with their clothes, So bend over to the front and touch your toes.
I left the Jag and I took the Rolls, If they ain't cuttin' then I put em on foot patrol.
OWWW!
How ya like me now, when my pinky's valued over three hundred thousand,
Lets drank you the one to please, Ludacris fill cups like double d's.
Me and Ush once more and we leaves em dead, we want a lady in the street but a freak in the bed to say.

I'm not sure what half of that means, but I have the feeling it's not pretty.

The NFL says, "Let's ban the non-misogynistic song by the pedophile in favor of misogynistic songs by non-pedophiles!" I'm confused... I myself would like to hear My Sharona* or (She's) Sexy + 17 after a touchdown. Any other suggestions?

*On George Bush's iPod, according to Wikipedia

McCullough and the Bee

The surging popularity of all things related to spelling bees has forced me to revisit a painful episode in my past, when I came in a shameful 16th place in the Philadelphia city-wide spelling bee of 1978.

The annual Bee was sponsored by the Philadelphia Evening Bulletin, which proudly carried the tagline, "Nearly Everyone Reads the Bulletin." But not everyone read the Bulletin, as the newspaper went out of business four years later, leaving nearly everyone to read the Philadelphia Inquirer. This may have been due in part to the fact that they blew a lot of money sponsoring spelling bees for pimple-addled junior high schoolers.

But I digress.

So I was thinking about all of the bee-craziness in our culture today: books and movies such as Akeelah and the Bee, Spellbound, Bee Season, The Secret Life of Bees... oh wait; that one wasn't about spelling bees. And I remembered that I was all about the Bee before anyone ever thought to make a movie or write a book about it.

So I dug this out of the vault:

Some faces have been obscured to protect the innocent. The man on the left, however was  the moderator who tripped me up with the word "planxty,"  so he gets to have his picture posted on my blog.

It was a big day. I washed my hair three times, with Herbal Essence Shampoo (or was it Faberge Organic? Or Earth Born?) and put on Maybelline mascara. I wore a skirt, for God's sake. I wore my fabulous, reversible blue/silver baseball jacket. And since this was a special occasion, I wore it silver side out. And I went on to shame my school, by mispelling planxty [\Planx"ty\, n. [Cf. L. plangere to mourn aloud.] (Mus.) An Irish or Welsh melody for the harp, sometimes of a mournful character.] I have not had occasion to use the word planxty in the 28 years since.

All I got to show for my humiliation that day was a copy of Merriam-Webster's Collegiate® Dictionary, a silly enamel pin with a bee on it, and this photo. I still have all three, although I don't know exactly where that enamel pin is.

Disclaimer: I don't look anything like that anymore

Bush's All-New Dumbest Statement Ever

I spotted this gem of a headline on Yahoo News yesterday:

"Bush says U.S. safer, but not yet safe." What the hell does that mean? How can something be a greater degree of something that it is not?

That's like saying "Bush is smarter, but not yet smart." What a moron. I hereby dub him the "Mad-Lib President" for all the sense he makes. I think he gets his inspiration from poorly-arranged refrigerator magnets.

A Hostile Workout Environment

I'm back in Blogland!

Last month, I was at the gym where I work out three times a week - except when I work out two times, or once, a week. I was lying on bench, ready to start lifting eight WHOLE pounds of dumbbells, and these two musclebound gym guys were standing a little too close to me; in fact, they were right above me, and they were talking instead of working out.

One said f*** this, f*** that, every other word. He also said f***ing this, f***ing that. He used f***ing to modify words that don't even need modifiers: "Then I went to the f***ing store and I f***ing saw they didn't have any f***ing Gatorade left, and I was like, f*** this."

Then they moved onto to a more interesting topic, women. The f***ing guy was telling the other guy, who looked a lot like Fred Flintstone, about a woman he met at a party. "Yeah," he said. "She had nice titties."

Titties. Titties. He said "titties." In 2006, in Arlington, Massachusetts. And then he said it again and again. I tried my usual, direct method for dealing with rude behavior; I glared at them. They ignored me. Finally, I stopped lifting weights and just sat up and glared at them. Thankfully, they moved a little farther away, not as a result of my glaring, and continued their scintillating conversation about titties.

Through the din of grunts and clanging weights, I heard Fred Flintstone say, "She's 36..." and I thought "Oh my God; now they are discussing bra size," and I had to restrain myself from going over and banging him on the head with my eight-pound dumbbell. Thank God I didn't, because it turned out the Fred's mind was not in the gutter and he was talking about someone's age.

The whole episode disgusted me so much that I just had to go on a little hiatus from the gym. Besides, I was feeling lazy. I finally went back after a couple of weeks, resolving that, if I ever hear the word "titties" again at the gym, I will have to scream, "Penis, penis, penis!" at them until they shut up.

The Lunch Truck - Only the Strong Survive

In an effort to strengthen my stomach before the family grand tour of China and Cambodia in July, I have been availing myself of the culinary delights offered by two lunch trucks near my office. They always have long lines (well at least one of them does), so I thought I should try it. They're convenient, they're cheap... why, they're ptoumaine-y good!

On day one, I purchased a fairly innocuous steamed chicken, noodle and broccoli dish, which was nice and simple. The second day, I decided to try something else. I can't for the life of me remember what it was, but I remember feeling only mildly queasy for the seven hours following lunch. On Wednesday, I decided to forsake my new favorite lunch truck and try the lunch truck next door. Both trucks serve Asian food, and both display health certificates, so I thought, "What could go wrong? I'm two-for-two!"

I chose a chicken-garlic-scallion combination. With the lunch truck, every day is like my birthday, as I bring the styrofoam container back to my office and have no idea what's in store when I open the lid. It's magical!

I opened the lid on this day and laid my eyes on the most horrific-looking pile of "chicken" I have ever seen. Said "chicken" was actually knobs of gristle and fat with minuscule amounts of dark meat. I moved the pile to the side so that I could enjoy the rice and the one piece of broccoli underneath. I considered eating the styrofoam container. After lunch, I had a rather uneasy feeling; what I imagine one might feel after accidentally eating a human foot.

Finally, on Friday it was back to the old, reliable lunch truck. I decided to order tofu with peanut sauce. After all, how can you screw up tofu?

I learned that you can screw up tofu... you can make it really mushy and wet, and then you can pour a gallon of peanut sauce that's the consistency of slightly warmed-up Skippy on it. Once again, I picked at the rice and ate the one piece of broccoli.

I think I am done with the lunch truck, as I believe my stomach can now survive anything. I now know that I can eat freely on our trip without worry, and will enjoy everything from street vendor meat-on-a-stick to live chickens.